


view from a bridge

by palmviolet



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: (all the gang get a POV at some point), 80s references, Byers Family Has Powers (Stranger Things), Everyone gets the storyline they deserve, Fixing the issues with ST3, Gay Will Byers, Jim "Chief" Hopper Lives, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Multi, POV Multiple, ST4 if annie was in the writers' room, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 173,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26565298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmviolet/pseuds/palmviolet
Summary: January 1986. In an icy small town way up north, the Byers struggle to make ends meet. The others, left in Hawkins, struggle to move on from the past. The Department of Energy has its eyes on all of them.And the Upside Down isn't done with them yet.
Relationships: Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Pre Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley/Kali Prasad, one-sided Joyce Byers/Karen Wheeler - Relationship
Comments: 138
Kudos: 140





	1. The Hellfire Club

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is almost entirely complete, and it will be posted at weekly intervals, probably on sundays. 
> 
> the list of warnings (too long to fit in the tags) is as follows: implied/referenced self harm, implied/referenced suicide, mental health issues, minor character death, racism, police abuse of power, period-typical homophobia, anti-semitism, graphic depictions of violence, body horror, implied/referenced child abuse & neglect, and implied/referenced domestic violence. 
> 
> there is also dubious medical practice, which in places is a plot point, in others is period typical, and in others is probably the result of me just not knowing what i'm talking about. so yeah quick disclaimer don't take any of this fic as medical advice.
> 
> i have created a fake 'netflix' carrd for this fic [found here.](https://viewfromabridge.carrd.co/)
> 
> thanks to liz, a literal ray of sunshine, and mya, who inspires me and makes me happy every day. also shoutout to mrsevadnecake, author of the fic ([in a strange land](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16464140/chapters/38557898)) that convinced me writing a novel-length cosmic horror stranger things fic was worth it. 
> 
> enjoy.

“The harvest is past

The summer is 

ended and we are

not saved.”

– Jeremiah 8:20

“...and the Great Enigma can’t be thought of unless you turn the head the other way, and come upon thinking with the eye that you fear, which is called the back of the head; it’s the one we use when looking at the beloved in a dark place… as in the eye of a child lost a long while will be found the contraction of that distance—a child going small in the claws of a beast, coming furiously up the furlongs of the iris.”

– Djuna Barnes, _Nightwood_ (1937)

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

`******0126 HOURS, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22ND, 1986**`

    `WHY DO YOU THINK IT CAME AFTER YOU?`
    `JB: [laughs cynically] I don’t know. I don’t- how would I know? `
    `IF YOU HAD TO GUESS.`
    `JB: If I had to guess. Jesus- Jesus Christ. [fumbling with cigarette packet, Camel filters. Dr. O████ gives her a light] Alright, if I had to guess- well, we had theories about it. Something to do with what went wrong in your life. Missed opportunities. It’s no secret that my life has gone a whole lot of wrong. It’s probably- [gestures at her file on the table] it’s probably all in that goddamn file there, I don’t know, you work it out. Some of the others saw it but we thought that was more of a- I don’t know, a defence mechanism. It didn’t go after them in the same way. They didn’t- it didn’t show __them.`
    `SHOW THEM WHAT?`
    `JB: Everything. It was- everything. [wipes her nose, which has been bleeding continuously; Dr. O████ hands her a fresh box of tissues] I can’t explain it. It can’t be explained.`
    `WE NEED YOU TO TRY.`
    `JB: You- you need me- you need me to try? Fuck you. You’re the ones who brought it into this world in the first place. This is your fault.`
    `IT EXISTED BEFORE US.`
    `JB: You don’t get it, do you? You really- [pauses, takes several long drags of the cigarette] You don’t understand at all. Once it’s out there- in the world- Like Pandora’s Box. Once you let it in, it’s everywhere. Always. Playing with things you don’t understand-`
    `THEN HELP US UNDERSTAND.`
    `JB: [a long pause] It’s not that simple. It’s not- [stubs out her cigarette, crosses her arms] I want to see my children.`
    `THEY’RE PERFECTLY SAFE. YOU CAN SEE THEM WHEN YOU’VE BEEN DEBRIEFED.`
    `JB: ‘Perfectly safe’? Don’t you fucking dare give me that bullshit. You’ve spent the last three years of my life lying to me- No. Longer. You’ve been lying to me since 1957. `
    `YOUR AUNT-`
    `JB: Shut up. I want to see my children.`
    `ONE MORE QUESTION, THEN, MRS. BYERS-`
    `JB: It’s Horowitz. Not Byers.`
    `MS. HOROWITZ. YOU SAID IT SHOWED YOU THINGS, THINGS THAT YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN. BUT CAN YOU DESCRIBE THEM? ANY OF WHAT YOU SAW?`
    `JB: You still don’t get it. You don’t want to know, trust me. Trust me. There are things in this world that- that we don’t need to know. That we shouldn’t know. You should have left it in the dark where it belongs. `

`  
`

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

**Wednesday, January 15th, 1986**

Somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota

“No!”

El’s shout cuts through the air and Will shoots up, looking at her across the room, wide and alert and ready for danger. He’s grasping for the long branch he used as a staff when he was _Will the Wise,_ that he keeps by his bed just in case. Weak, early sunlight is filtering through the curtains and El’s chest is heaving with every breath. She doesn’t look at him.

“El?” he ventures. “You okay?”

Her forehead is shining with sweat but the pale skin between her nose and lip is clear. No powers. No nosebleed. 

“El?”

He glances at the clock - nearly a quarter to eight - and swings his legs out of bed. Finally she looks at him, her now long hair swinging around her face as she turns. “I had a dream,” she says, and his shoulders droop. The tension falls away. 

“That’s it?” He sighs. “C’mon, we gotta get ready.”

“I saw-” she starts, but he’s not in the mood for this, not anymore. Dreams aren’t life-threatening, not if you have them when you’re asleep. He should know. He’s practically an expert by now. 

“We have to get ready,” he repeats, grabbing a t-shirt and his jeans from where he slung them over a chair. “Bathroom’s mine first.”

He hears her heave a sigh as he leaves - a heavy, exhausted sound. Like she’s angry at him, or just angry at the world. He wouldn’t really blame her, for either. He’s angry too.

He showers in water so hot it’s scalding, just the way he likes it. Just the way he needs it, to not feel like he’s losing himself. Afterwards he looks in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, watching the condensation slowly fade away in maps of cloud. There’s an orange pill bottle sitting on the rim of the sink by the tap. His mom’s, no doubt. Indeed when he looks closer he can see that it is:

    _DIAZEPAM 10mg_
    _Joyce Horowitz_
    _85562 Dr. Anton_
    _TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH EVERY DAY_
    _11/29/85_

It looks suspiciously empty. When he picks it up it’s light, and when he rattles it it’s silent. He wonders if she knows she’s run out. Wonders if she has another bottle somewhere, or if she’ll be subjected to the trials of withdrawal and anxiety flooding back in. El’s nightmare, her fractious expression, flashes through his mind. Not today, he thinks. Today would be a bad day for something to go wrong.

He passes Jonathan in the corridor, who raises his eyebrows at him under a thicket of hair carelessly shunted to the side. “You’re gonna be late if you don’t leave soon, y’know,” he says. 

El emerges from their bedroom, leans in the doorway, and glares at him. “That’s because he takes _so. Long._ In the bathroom.”

“I don’t-”

“Just get ready, okay?” Jonathan interrupts, silencing the argument that’s brewing between them. El glares, Will sulks, and Jonathan continues on to the kitchen like nothing ever happened.

Ten minutes later they’re both in the kitchen, wolfing down plates of toast and eggs as Jonathan’s boombox screeches mournfully. _The Smiths_ are his latest favorite, and while Will doesn’t mind them, well-

    _...But that joke isn't funny anymore_
    _It's too close to home_
    _And it's too near the bone_
    _More than you'll ever know_
    _Kick them when they fall down…_

“Do we have to listen to this in the mornings?” his mom says, as she breezes in with all the tranquility of an electric storm in her sea-green waitressing smock. “Isn’t it a bit… you know-”

“Depressing?” El suggests. “Sad?”

“It’s _good,_ ” Jonathan retorts, and looks set to continue his argument before Joyce interrupts.

“Have you seen my spare medication? I could swear I had some, but…”

The three of them go silent. It’s not a sore topic, exactly, but it sure does somber them up. Finally, Jonathan speaks. ‘I don’t think you have any. Are you completely out?”

She nods, and pinches her lips together. She’s trying her best to appear calm, unbothered, Will sees this. He also sees the way her fingers are worrying at her sleeve. “Didn’t you ask…” he starts, and trails off as they all look at him. “Jonathan. You asked Jonathan to pick up your next prescription.”

All eyes turn back to Jonathan and it’s his turn to swallow hard. “That’s right,” Joyce says. “I did- I asked you- where did you put them?”

“I- um- I didn’t pick it up,” he mumbles. She stares and immediately he backtracks, starts to apologise. “I’m sorry- there was that photography thing and then I had to collect Will from art and then it was the weekend, so the pharmacy wasn’t open-”

“Jonathan,” she says, and her voice is so full of open disappointment and dismay that it makes Will’s chest ache and he has to look away, feeling the sting of it like it’s directed at him. El, he notices, has the same reaction. “Jonathan, I trust you, I need to feel like I can rely on you, what am I supposed to do now? You can’t just- just ‘not get around to it’. I need-” Her voice cracks and she breaks off. She looks around at Will and El as if she’s only just remembered they’re here. “We’ll, um, talk about it later. For now I need you to take the kids to school.”

“What?!” Jonathan’s mouth falls open in outrage. “You can’t- they can bike there- I’ll be late for my shift-”

“It’s snowy out,” she says, hugging herself as if to illustrate her point. “I don’t want them biking in it, they might get hurt.” _They,_ as if neither he nor El are here in the room. “And you won’t be late for your shift, not if you leave now.”

Jonathan groans, rolls his eyes, but secretly Will feels a jolt of relief that he won’t have to face the bracing winter chill on his bike this morning. It still hurts, still throbs in an age-old ache sent down to his very bones. He thinks his mother knows this, because she catches his eye with a brief, warm smile. A smile that says _Don’t worry, I got you,_ and somehow it doesn’t matter that she speaks about him like he’s not here, for one moment, at least.

He watches her grab her coat - still old, still ratty, still that same thin, faded shade of tan - and head for the door. “Mom-” Jonathan starts. She turns to look at him with eyes like daggers. “At least eat some breakfast before you go. Please?”

Her gaze softens but she doesn’t halt. “I gotta go, Jonathan. Save it for the kids, I’m gonna be late.”

With that she’s gone in a gust of frigid air, bringing with it the sharp, clean scent of fresh snow. Jonathan stares at the closed door for a moment before bringing his gaze back around to the pan of leftover eggs, now with no one to eat them. “You want any more before we go?” he asks them, a little hopelessly since he knows they won’t say yes - and they both shake their heads. He slides them regretfully into the trash. Eggs gone, his expression changes to one of businesslike haste. “Alright, get your stuff. We gotta go.”

Five minutes later sees them all packed in Jonathan’s car, which wheezes and splutters like a cancer patient before reluctantly jolting to a start. Condition: terminal. Prognosis: a couple more weeks. At best. Will and El have their cursory fight over shotgun, before Jonathan snaps and makes them both sit in the back. The two of them sit in mutinous silence as The Smiths croon mournfully in the background.

    _It doesn't make me smile_
    _I wish I could laugh_
    _But that joke isn't funny anymore_
    _It's too close to home_
    _And it's too near the-_

“Isn’t this the same song as before?” he interrupts. 

Jonathan gives him a strange look in the rearview mirror. “I don’t-”

“This is the same song as before. Why are you listening to it again?”

“Maybe he likes it,” says El, not spitefully but with some element of irritation. It’s something more than him hogging the bathroom that’s making her angry now, he can tell. Maybe it was him dismissing her dream - but she can’t blame him for that. They all have dreams.

“It’s not the same song,” Jonathan says, and Will frowns.

“Uh, yeah, it is,” he insists, because it is. _Kick them when they fall down, kick them when they fall down,_ Morrissey drawls, and is everyone else deaf or something? But they get away with ignoring him because then they’re pulling up to the school gates and El’s already piling out of the car without even a backwards glance. Will climbs out too, but leans back in at the last second - “Are you gonna pick us up?”

Jonathan audibly groans, flexing his hand on the wheel. “I- sure. Mom or I will be here. God knows she won’t let you walk.” 

“Thank you!” Will calls as he steps back, watches his brother drive away. It’s beginning to snow again. He hopes idly they don’t get stuck at school, learning algebra constantly in some kind of limbo as the snow swirls on forever outside. He digs his hands further into his pockets and runs after El. “Hey, wait up!”

“What?” she grinds out, when he’s caught up with her. She’s got her arms crossed over her chest against the cold, although they’re nearly inside.

“Our lockers are right next to each other,” he says, blinking at her hostility. It’s not like they haven’t fought in the mornings before. He’d rather the day not get off to such a bitter start.

She shrugs as they enter the building, start their passage down the long, bright corridors. So like Hawkins, and so not. Red lockers, instead of blue. Faces that barely blink at him as he passes.

They blink at El, though. They’re whispering as she moves down the corridor, even pointing fingers like some stupid cliche. Will’s hand snakes down to take hers and she shrugs him off angrily. “Just ignore them, okay?” he says in a low voice, undeterred.

She says nothing, only hunches her shoulders and stares at the floor.

“Hey, ET!” They both whip around as the boy comes barrelling towards them, knocking into El’s shoulder and sending her bag tumbling to the floor, books spilling everywhere. “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there.” He laughs and walks off. Will stares at him with a gaze like daggers, and in the corner of his eye sees El doing the same. Once upon a time the boy would have fallen down dead, brain boiling and frothing in his skull, but now he stalks off oblivious.

El raises a hand to her face as if on instinct but there’s nothing there, only the beginnings of tears. “Fuck,” she says, softly, as he crouches down beside her.

“Don’t let Mom hear you say that.” He gathers up her fallen books, stacks them neatly in a pile. “Darren’s a moron, seriously.”

She blinks at him. The crowd of students has parted around them like the Red Sea but they’re not ignoring them, they’re looking and whispering even more. Will glares. If they knew what they’d seen- what they’d done- who they’d faced-

But they don’t. That’s the point. To them, Will’s just the quiet art kid with the weird sister who’s great at math but not much else, who can’t read aloud without hesitating and stares at people like she’s in Stephen King. It’s a recipe for bullying, just like it would have been in Hawkins. Just like it was.

Some things don’t change, no matter what state you’re in.

“Thanks,” she says, smudging away her tears, her first kind word to him all morning. “Go, you’re gonna be late.”

“El-”

“Go!” she repeats, glaring at him as she gets to her feet. “I’m fine.”

She’s not, but there’s not much else he can do. He grabs a book from his locker and moves away down the corridor with a backwards glance full of trepidation, but El’s nodding him on. At least they seem to be on the same page again, finally. He doesn’t like to argue with her. Really he doesn’t.

In the classroom he takes up his usual desk on the left near the back. Mr. Reyes has already started talking, seemingly oblivious to the fact that half the seats are still empty. He feels a poke in his back and turns to look at the culprit, Ryan, a boy with hair the same fiery shade as Max’s and headphones slung carelessly around his neck, still faintly blasting screeching metal.

“No snow day. Sucks to be us, right?” He doesn’t bother to speak quietly. The teacher, who’s now spelling out an equation on the blackboard with squeaking chalk, doesn’t turn around.

“Sucks to be us,” Will echoes, and smiles at him. “How was the arcade?’

“Shh!” Ryan leans forward with a playful hiss: “They can’t know I’m a nerd!”

“I’ll tell them all if you don’t tell me about the arcade. C’mon, my mom won’t let me go and I need to know if it’s worth the effort persuading her.”

“It totally is. They got this new game, _Hang On,_ only released three months ago. You should totally come play, it’s got this really cool motion control thing-”

He frowns. “I swear that was released in July.” He and Dustin had spent hours playing it when the arcade was reopened, after the destruction of the mall flooded the rest of the town with life again like a dam bursting open. 

Ryan just raises an eyebrow. “Whatever, man. Convince your mom.”

“ _Whatever, man,_ ” Will mimics, as he turns back to the front. “You sound like Tony.”

“You would know. How long did you spend with him on Saturday again? When you were meant to be meeting me at three? I had to wait inside the gas station, man. The clerk was eyeing me up like I was gonna steal something. Not cool. At all.”

“I didn’t-” Will starts, but the words slip off his tongue unsaid. Tony’s footsteps are silent, his movements graceful and soundless, but somehow Reyes notices him anyway.

“Valdez! You’re late.”

Tony smiles an easy smile. “Sorry, sir. The snow.” He passes a casual hand through his just-too-long black hair, letting a lock of it bounce back to his forehead. “Won’t happen again.”

Reyes just nods at him vaguely and goes back to scratching at the blackboard with that painful nub of chalk. Tony grins at Will as he comes towards him. Slides into the chair beside him with careless ease. 

“Hey,” Will manages, throat dry as sandpaper. 

“Hey yourself.” He leans over, voice considerably quieter than Ryan’s ever was. “Did you do the homework? I got stuck halfway through and you’re so good at math I thought...”

“Sure,” Will says immediately, automatically, fishing the sheet out of his book without another thought. He isn’t good at math; the sheet is mainly the product of El’s numerical genius; he doesn’t feel too guilty about it. “Snow, was it?” He wrinkles his nose. Tony _reeks_ of weed _._ “Sure it wasn’t something greener?”

Tony lifts a finger to smiling lips, _shh, don’t tell,_ and Will bites his tongue, hard, to stop himself from staring at them too long. “You’re a lifesaver, man.”

“Sure,” he says, but he’s blushing furiously. He stares down at his desk and tries to prevent his pen etching Tony’s name into its scuffed wooden surface.

“O-kay, I’m aware that it’s snowy outside and that fact is for some reason exciting to you all but it’s now time to learn. That means headphones away, Mr Anton.” Will turns as Ryan rolls his eyes and stuffs his headphones in his bag with a _what can you do_ shrug. “Now, who can tell me how we use the quadratic formula?”

At the front Mary’s hand shoots straight up. “You use it to solve equations. First you rearrange the equation into the right format, so you know what _a, b,_ and _c_ are. Then you put them into the quadratic formula and just simplify it down until you have the answer.”

“In broad terms, yes, Mary. Well done,” Reyes says, as Tony leans over with a whispered, “Shouldn’t she be in Algebra II?”

Will shrugs, distracted by the hot breath on his ear. 

“That’s not all, though,” Reyes continues, voice dry as ever. “If the numbers in the square root are simplified into the negative, then there is no answer. You can’t square root a negative. Some equations just can’t be solved.”

The whole class sighs. “So what’s the point?” someone groans.

“The point is,” Mary says, twisting in her seat to look at the culprit, “you try. And there is an answer, Mr Reyes. There’s still plots on the graph. It just doesn’t intercept the y-axis. It’s still _there,_ even if we can’t find it or see it.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

Hawkins, Indiana

“Mike! Breakfast!”

Mike rolls out of bed and tries his damnedest to look like he didn’t sleep in his clothes. He’s not sure he succeeds, because his mom blinks at him suspiciously through her mascara when she swings the door open. 

“Did you only just get out of bed?”

“...No?” he tries. 

She sighs at him and extends her arm, taps her watch meaningfully. “Ten minutes, Michael. I want you down for breakfast now. You can brush your hair et cetera when you’ve eaten.”

His face springs into a smile, which he hastily wipes away when she frowns. Right, he’s not normally happy about all that. Especially not his mom bossing him around like he’s still an eleven-year-old. But as luck would have it - or rather his dad, who’s being more difficult by the day and is therefore doing an excellent job of distracting his mom - he’s gotten away with it. Scot free.

“Thanks, Mom,” he says in the kitchen as he begins to wolf down his bacon. “Great breakfast.”

“You’re welcome.” Karen beams a little and he almost feels bad. Almost.

“Wait, Mike-” Nancy shouts as she rushes into the kitchen to find the plate empty, the last rasher disappearing into his mouth. “You little asshole! That was mine!”

Shit. That he maybe does feel guilty about, at least until he meets her eyes and realises she’s contemplating getting her gun out of her handbag and shooting him right there. It’s fear now. Definitely fear. (His dad probably wouldn’t even notice.) “Mom just gave me this plate-”

“No she didn’t, you-”

“Oh, Nancy, I’m so sorry, I did.” She whips around to look at their mom, hair (now long again, free of that horrible perm) swinging. “I can make you some more-” Karen starts, but she’s already flouncing away.

“Forget it!” 

“Did you have a nice lunch with Steve yesterday…?” Their mom shouts after her, to no response. She sighs and shakes her head - at Nancy or at herself, Mike doesn’t know.

“So, what, are they dating again now?” He feels more than a little disgusted at the thought, not only because it’s Steve Harringtonand he’s only just getting used to the thought that oh, we like _Steve Harrington_ now. It’s also because she’s meant to be dating Jonathan, and Jonathan’s away, and if Jonathan being away means she can’t date him anymore then what does that mean for him and El-

But him and El are different. Different to all of them. And besides, he and El got there first, and Jonathan’s basically her brother now, so it’s kind of weird if he and Nancy stay together. Right? 

“I don’t know, Michael. You probably know more than I do.”

In the abstract sense, that is definitely and terrifyingly true. What does she know about monsters coming out of walls and Russians conspiring underneath their feet and little girls raised in laboratories? She thinks El is just a nice girl from out of town. 

(Which maybe she is, in some ways, now.)

Without another word he heads back upstairs, ignoring her calling after him. He’ll have to wrap up warm, since there’s no chance in hell Nancy’s gonna give him a lift, not after he ate her breakfast. He’d rather not cycle. He still feels cold in his bones from his trip out last night. But he’ll have to hurry if he wants to make it in time for homeroom. 

As he’s grabbing a pair of socks his eyes catch on the photo sitting framed on the dresser, lovingly presented there the day they all left town. It’s the party, as it stood over the summer - him and Will and Lucas and Dustin, and El and Max too. He and El are holding hands, hopping over tree trunks and branches, while Lucas and Dustin are disputing something in the foreground and Will and Max are laughing at them from behind a tree. Jonathan took it in the woods behind Will’s house, he remembers, one hot day right after school ended for the summer, before Dustin left for camp and the party began to fall apart. It fires up a sharp, hot sting in his chest. They’d played DnD that day. The last time- well, ever. They’d had so much fun.

He blinks away a quick, angry flush of tears and flips the frame facedown. Nostalgia doesn’t get you anywhere. You can’t ever go back, no matter how much you might want to. If the past three years have taught him anything, they’ve taught him that. 

He opens another drawer, roots around the scattered mess of unfolded (but clean) underwear as he hears his mom calling his name. “Michael! You’re gonna be late if you aren’t out that door in the next twenty seconds!” He rolls his eyes, finds what he’s looking for, shoves it deep in his pocket and bounds down the stairs two at a time.

“I’m going, I’m going!” He shrugs off her worrying hands as she tries to tug his collar up against the cold.

“Don’t forget to zip up your coat!” she calls after him, when he’s laced up his shoes and is halfway out the door. He turns and walks backwards, exaggeratedly showing her the action of zip on his puffer. “Have a good day!”

The door closes, he vaults onto his bike, and then he’s off into the glaring winter sun. The streets are icy, empty, like everyone else was sensible enough to stay home. Mike shivers and cycles a little faster. 

When he gets to school the entrance is hardly any busier and well, shit, he’s late. He dumps his bike, locks it (because this may be Hawkins but you can’t exactly ever be sure), and dashes down the corridor, making it to his homeroom just in time as Mr. Franklin says, “Mike Wheeler!”

“Here,” he gasps, as he slides into his seat beside Lucas. 

Lucas gives him a long, lazy glare. “Asshole. You left me sitting on my own for way too long.”

“Sorry,” he says, voice breezy. “Didn’t think you’d be here, anyway. Don’t you have basketball practice in the mornings now?”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “Not _all morning_ , man. Which you’d know if you turned up to class once in a while.”

“Give me a break, okay? How was Erica’s birthday party?”

He groans. “Awful. It was awful. All her friends are annoying. So. Annoying. And they wound up playing DnD with Will’s old stuff but they were playing it _wrong_ and it was so painful to…”

Lucas continues talking and Mike unconsciously tunes him out. _Will’s old stuff._ Maybe if he hadn’t been so focused on El- hadn’t been so stupid, so awful to him- maybe Will would have fought harder to stay. Maybe they would have stayed. Maybe he’d be having this conversation with Will too, and they’d all be laughing at Lucas’ pathological annoyance at his sister and there wouldn’t be this aching feeling of _being left behind_ in Mike’s every conversation.

“You all have a good day, now,” Franklin says and Mike’s out of his chair in an instant. 

“See ya later,” he passes to Lucas over his shoulder, and misses him rolling his eyes. Mike’s got somewhere to be, and it’s not first period American History.

It’s still freezing cold outside, surprise surprise. Mike burrows deeper into his coat and leans against the wall by the bike racks, just out of sight of the entrance and the window of the staff room beyond (having learnt from experience). “Come on,” he mutters, casting a furtive glance around him. They don’t have much time before track practice starts opposite and Trainer Jones cusses them out for not being in class.

“You cold?”

Her sardonic voice greets him and he lets his shoulders relax. “Fuck you, I am. What took you so long?”

Max smirks at him. Her posture is loose, her hands casual by her sides. She doesn’t look like she feels the cold, lucky bastard. “Dustin held us all up explaining some science thing to our homeroom teacher.”

“Of course he did.” He mounts his bike and halts to let her swing up on the back of it. “Usual place?”

She places her hands on his shoulders. They’re warm through his coat. “Punch it, Wheeler.”

He doesn’t comment on her _Star Trek_ reference, although he’s dying to. She might laugh but equally she might walk away and he doesn’t have anyone else to skip class with, so. He remains silent. 

Ten minutes later they’re cycling between the trees, slowly so they don’t go flying over branches concealed under the snow. It’s dim, almost dark, under the canopy of the woods. It’s always like this. Up ahead is their spot - theirs, only theirs. 

It’s a well, ancient and disused, browning moss creeping up its cracked bricks. Old cigarette butts litter the ground around it, though they’ve never seen anyone else here. Some of them are theirs, of course. Mike’s promised himself he’ll clean them up someday. 

They both swing off his bike and he drops it on the ground by the well, moving to take up his usual position perched on the edge. One foot swinging down into the deep, echoing depths, the other anchored firmly to the ground. Then he gets out the pack of Lucky Strikes he’d smuggled from his underwear drawer that morning, as Max retrieves her brother’s old lighter that he’s no longer around to use.

“So,” she says, around a sigh of smoke when she’s got one between her lips, “is there a reason you’re wearing yesterday’s clothes?”

Mike sighs. There’s no use in lying to her, because she’ll see right through it. Besides, he’d planned on telling her anyway. “I used Cerebro last night.”

“Last night?” She sits up further. “You mean, at _night_ night?”

He nods. “I- well. I don’t know. I had this dream, and then I was so sure that something was wrong, so I- I had to check. I cycled all the way up there in the snow.”

“Shit, Mike, you’re crazy. And? What happened? Did you talk to them?”

“I talked to El. Will was asleep. She said she was fine, but- I don’t know. She sounded off somehow. Different.”

Max raises an eyebrow. “Tends to happen when you don’t see each other for months at a time.”

“We talk, though. On the phone and on Cerebro. I know when something’s wrong.”

“Okay.” It’s not a sceptical ‘okay’, like he’s used to her giving. She actually sounds like she believes him, and even that is enough to even out the vague tension in his spine. He takes out his own cigarette and she clearly sees the opportunity to change the subject. “Your mom smelled it on you yet?”

“Nope.” Mike sticks it between his teeth and cups his hand against the wind as he lights it. “You think I’d be here if she did? She’d probably come with me to school as like… a spy. My personal bodyguard.”

“Lucky you. My mom knows.”

He risks a glance at her. Her voice has gone sour. 

“And what my mom knows…”

“Shit,” he says, filling in the gap. “Is he-”

“Hurting me?” She lets out a bitter, sharp breath that hisses through her teeth. “You mean, more than usual?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just rolls up her sleeve to show him a mottled splash of purple and blue on her arm. “It’s not like how he hurt Billy, if that’s what you’re asking. Not yet, anyway.”

“Max…” Mike inches closer. She’s not looking at him. Her gaze is focused on the dark, endless pit beside them. “You gotta tell someone.”

She laughs. She honest-to-god laughs, while her bruised wrist is still on show and the well is gaping wide beside them. “Who? Your mom? Chief Randall? Mrs Byers? No one who can is gonna do anything, and no one who would do something can. It’s a shitty situation, Wheeler, but it’s- it’s life.”

“El would,” he says, voice low. He trains his gaze on the fine grit speckling the mossy stone between them. 

“What?”

He looks up. “El would do something.”

For once there’s no sharpness in her eyes, and her face is sad. “Yeah. She would. But she’s not here, and anyway- she can’t. Not anymore.”

Mike isn’t convinced Steve’s nail-bat wouldn’t do the trick just as well, but Max’s expression is resolute. She doesn’t want to be saved, for whatever reason, and he’s not here to judge. That’s why they hang out, after all. To not be judged. Lucas and Dustin - they don’t get it. Not really.

Max does.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

Robin’s beginning to like DEVO. Or, at least, they’re growing on her. Like a tumor. 

They play all day every day on Keith’s favorite radio station, which he won’t let her change even when he’s not on shift. She’s found herself singing along increasingly often, much to her own horror. While DEVO isn’t Cyndi Lauper, it’s definitely a step down.

She glares at the radio sitting innocently on the counter as the opening beats of _Beautiful World_ blast out yet again. She’d thought movie and music taste must go hand in hand, but apparently not. Keith severely lacks the latter. 

She checks her watch. Twenty-five past ten. Two hours and twenty-five minutes since they opened, thirty-five minutes until she has to go to class. Working part-time sucks, she knows that much from sprinting into class red-faced too many times to count. And Steve, the asshole, has forsaken her, which makes the whole thing a hell of a lot less fun.

“Robin!” The shout accompanies the belated ‘ding!’ of the bell and she hurriedly swings her legs off the counter to see Dustin racing towards her. “Hey.”

“Hey?” She quirks an eyebrow. “You come running in here like the Russians are chasing you and all you have to say is ‘hey’?”

“Shh!” He looks around furtively, and when apparently he’s sure that no one’s listening - “Nice to see you too.”

She frowns at him. “Hey, shouldn’t you be in school? It’s like, ten thirty. Pretty sure freshmen don’t get free periods.”

“Maybe I’m just that smart,” he quips, then deflates when she looks down her nose at him. (Because she’s still taller than him, thank fuck. She can still claim that little victory.) “Well, I know for a fact Max and Mike are skipping, so…”

She sighs. “Of course they are.” She vaults over the counter, slides up onto it so her legs are dangling down, and pats the space next to her. “Come sit, Henderson.”

Cautiously, he shrugs off his backpack and climbs up to sit beside her. “If you’re going to lecture me, I’m not staying. I have more important things to do.”

 _Like what?_ she thinks, but doesn’t say it. “I’m not gonna lecture you. All I’m gonna say is that Mike is a little shit, alright? From what Steve’s told me, and from what I’ve seen when I met him-”

“Hey! Mike’s the leader of our party,” Dustin protests, but his gaze is downcast and there’s not much feeling in his voice. Clearly, he knows that ‘the party’ is a now fragile concept at best. 

“Be that as it may - and I’m not denying that, he can be the leader of all the parties you want - but he’s- well. Not a great example.”

“So what should I do? Just… go to class like everything’s normal? Learn algebra like we haven’t almost died, like, sixteen times? Like everything hasn’t changed? Because it has. And the high school science teacher’s full of crap, anyway, not like Mr. Clarke. She won’t be any use the next time Hawkins gets invaded by another dimension, so what’s the point?”

“Dustin…” She doesn’t know how to convince him - especially when she’s not so sure he isn’t right. They’re living lives in which they don’t know when the next horror will strike, living their lives under the threat of what may as well be a nuclear bomb. She’s going to work and she’s going to school because she knows if she graduates and has earnt enough money in the process- well. She’ll be out of here like a shot.

But Dustin doesn’t have that option. Dustin’s stuck here for another four years whatever he does. “You see, I’m right. You know I am. And Steve skipped school all the time-”

“Steve? You’re seriously basing this on Steve?”

He grins. “Right, maybe not.” They both get in a shared laugh and she feels some of the concern in her chest loosen. “How is Steve, anyway?”

Her smile fades and she tilts her head back, stares at the shitty foam board ceiling. “I have no idea. I’ve talked to him a bit, but…”

“But he’s busy. Right.” Dustin, too, sounds despondent. “You’d think he’d have just a little bit of time for his friends, just occasionally. D’you think he’s okay?”

“Do I think he’s _okay?”_ She’s about to say _yeah, I think he’s absolutely fine_ , because he’s not the first popular kid (ex-popular or not) to ditch her after a month or two, but somehow that doesn’t ring true. “I dunno, Henderson. I mean, at least he’s talking to his dad again? Like, that’s gotta be nice.”

“Yeah, but his dad isn’t nice. I thought he said ‘screw you’ to all that when he started working at Scoops with you, but now he’s back working with his dad? I don’t get it, Robin. I don’t get it.”

Of course he doesn’t get it. She’s not surprised. Dustin only just started high school. He’s a kid who has big worries, sure, big worries about the world falling down around his ears and his friends being murdered by monsters, but he has a home waiting for him at the end of it. A home, and pocket money, and class on Monday that he doesn’t really want to go to but he will in the end because that’s what you do when you’re a kid. You go to class and you go to the arcade and you go to parties and at the end of it you graduate and boom, suddenly it’s all up to you again. 

That’s the weird thing about kids in Hawkins, she thinks. They can face monsters without batting an eyelid but they don’t know what a tax return is and some of them still believe in Santa. 

“I dunno, Dustin, it’s complicated.”

“That’s what he said when I asked him. And now all he does is go to his dad’s office and go to business lunches and drinks and dinners with Nancy. He doesn’t hang out with anyone else anymore.”

Now that doesn’t surprise her. Nancy had been cool for all of ten minutes, when she was wielding a gun unflinching and Robin was feeling _rather_ hot and bothered, but now she’s gone right back to suburban prissy princess. King Steve and Princess Nancy, reunited at last. And he’d promised Robin he wasn’t in love with her. 

“It’s just an internship. Something else to put in his college essay so maybe they’ll accept him this time round. That kind of thing’s important, you know. Like school.”

Dustin doesn’t respond, just fiddles with the strap of his bag between his fingers. “I’ve been thinking,” he says finally, and she knows that tone. It’s the ‘secret Russian code’ tone. It’s the ‘American heroes’ tone, the fixated bard-on-a-quest tone. It’s the tone that means she’ll have to watch her back, lest she gets dragged into it too. (And god forbid, messes up her precious GPA.) “About El.”

“What about El?” She leans over and turns the radio up. Better safe than sorry, isn’t that what they say? 

“Well, she’s number Eleven, right? So there’s gotta be a One through Ten.”

“Dustin…”

“No, hear me out. She lost her powers, right? What if one of the other numbers knows how to get them back? Besides, I’m sure she’d wanna meet them. The other numbers, not her powers. Though she’ll want them too.”

Robin hesitates. Clearly he’s been thinking about this for a while, enough that he’s got that determined light in his eyes which says he’s not gonna back down. Not yet, at least. Maybe he can be convinced if it turns out fruitless enough, in the long run. And maybe she should supervise, so it doesn’t all go wrong. (Besides, going from work to school with nothing in between is getting really fucking boring.) 

“Alright, you little nerd. You’re gonna lay your plan on me and then you’re gonna split. You gotta go to school if you wanna play spies, okay?” She swivels on the counter so she’s straddling it, legs hanging down either side, and leans forward so he can see how deadly serious she is. “I mean it. If your GPA suffers I’m kicking your ass in front of all the girls you’ve ever liked. Including Suzie, am I clear?”

She leans forward more than a little threateningly, though he’s only about an inch shorter than her at this point, and she watches him gulp with more than a little satisfaction. “Got it.” She knows he doesn’t get it, not really. He doesn’t understand why she’s so hung up on this. She doesn’t really understand either. Something about _ticket out of Hawkins_ , and the _Welcome to Hell_ sign that had remained at the town limit for at least three months.

When he’s gone she checks her watch and well shit, it’s time for her to go too. She grabs her keys and hits the light switch, locking the still-playing radio in, Mark Mothersbaugh’s voice still straining through the glass with a repeat of another godawful song.

    _Don't be tricked by what you see_
    _You got two ways to go_
    _I'll say it again in the land of the free_
    _Use your freedom of choice…_

It echoes in her ears as she cycles down the street, so fast her calves burn. Her wheels splash through already-melting snow and slush sprays up over her jeans, but she doesn’t have time to slow down. She’s gonna be late, again. If she’s not careful she’ll get her free periods changed to study hall and then she won’t have any time to work at the video store and then there goes her _getting the fuck out of dodge_ fund. Great. 

When she’s dumped her bike she hurries down the empty corridors, thankful to whatever gods are listening that her locker’s on her way. She’s so absorbed in unzipping her bag and adding to its weight of books without any falling out that she nearly misses what’s scrawled on it, until a voice behind her points it out.

“Big Brother is watching you,” Carol says with a halfhearted smirk, her lips puckering around the end of ‘you’ and lengthening it in what is apparently her best impression of a ghost.

Robin closes the door and stares at it. It’s a simple, crudely drawn eye, in something like thick black marker or paint. A weird method of bullying if ever she saw one. “That’s so two years ago,” she quips, knowing Carol won’t get it. “I guess this is your handiwork?”

The other girl pulls herself off the locker she’s leaning on and shrugs. As usual, she’s chewing gum, popping it with obnoxious disregard for anything like politeness. “No, actually. I’d have just written ‘dyke’ and be done with it.”

Robin looks at her evenly. It’s not the first time someone’s said it to her face, and it certainly won’t be the last. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because rumors are just rumors and she’ll be out of this town in six months. (If she gave them any truth, however, it would be a different story. The lack of evidence is all that’s stopping them tearing her apart.)

“That’s because you have no creativity, Carol. This person is an artist. They’ve got spark, originality.” She grins at the way Carol’s eyes have narrowed. “Live a little. Make art. It’s 1986.”

She can feel eyes on her as she continues down the hallway with a lot more confidence than she feels - but then again, what’s Carol to a Russian general in a secret underground base? What’s Carol to possessed Billy Hargove, with threads like black gasoline crawling up his neck? What’s Carol to the hidden flipside of the world?

If there’s one thing last summer’s good for, she thinks, it’s putting life in perspective.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“Omelette and burger for table twelve.” 

Joyce nods an acknowledgement as she takes the plates, not flinching at their heat. She’s been working here long enough now that she scarcely feels it. The chef doesn’t look at her as she collects them. She doesn’t mind.

Plates down on the table. “Let me know if I can get you anything else.” Watching them apply luxurious quantities of condiments that the diner can barely afford. Returning to her post by the till where her boss is surveying the tables critically.

“Thank god we include the service charge,” he mutters, as a family of six leave without so much as a goodbye. “We’d all be paupers otherwise.”

Joyce’s fingers twitch for a smoke, but instead she takes a tray from under the counter and heads over to the just-vacated table, piling on glasses and plates. Out to the kitchen, dump them on the stainless steel countertop for the pallid teen doing the dishes today. A brief smile for him - god knows he won’t get it from anyone else on the staff - before heading back out there, picking up a balled-up paper napkin from the floor, nodding her fake plastered smile at the man glaring for the bill. 

She thinks, sometimes, as she’s printing out the unfortunately short bill for him, that she might actually enjoy her job if she were working in a restaurant, as opposed to a diner. Somewhere nice. Somewhere like Enzo’s, her brain supplies, before she bites her lip so hard she tastes blood and cuts off that thought before it can blossom. 

Mickey’s Diner is certainly no Enzo’s.

Mickey himself snaps his fingers at her as she’s wiping the now-empty table down, and she looks up with a sigh. “Clear that table next,” he says, nodding at the long table of eight whose residents are just walking out the door. Mickey (real name Michael Jones), she notices, doesn’t move to help. Just stands there, self-satisfied, guarding the till like any second someone might run off with it. (And she’s not going to lie - she’s considered it, more than once. If only just to spite him.)

When she’s done clearing the second table she checks her watch and sighs with relief. Two-thirty - time for her (very late) lunchbreak. She nods at Mickey, taps her watch. _Time for me to go._ He rolls his eyes at her and she takes that as a sign of acknowledgement, untying her apron and dumping it in the little shoebox they use as lockers, because Mickey’s a goddamn cheapskate. Then she shrugs her coat on and is out the door, a cigarette already between her teeth. Jesus. Melvald’s was shit, but it was better than this. At least at Melvald’s she was left to her own devices. At Mickey’s there’s always at least two others on staff, and the chef at least is her boss’ staunch ally. She does the slightest thing wrong and-

Well, she’ll be out on her ass, she knows that much. There are plenty of undereducated struggling mothers in this town who’d take her place like a shot. She’s not that special, not here. Sometimes that’s a blessing - sometimes it’s a curse. She tries to focus on the former.

She has to cross her fingers as she starts her car. It had spluttered to a halt only a few weeks after they arrived here and she’d taken it to the local mechanic with a great deal of trepidation. He’d taken one look at it and laughed in disbelief - disbelief that she was still driving such a thing. “It’s nearly 1986, lady. Anyone still driving a ‘76 Ford Pinto definitely has a death wish.”

She’d just raised an eyebrow, her exhaustion then even greater than it is now. “Can you fix it?”

“Y’know these were recalled in ‘78, right? You really shouldn’t be driving it.”

“Can. You. Fix it.”

He shook his head at her, exasperated and confused - and of course he was. He didn’t get it. He didn’t get the squeeze of two children becoming three, of paychecks decreasing and decreasing until you have to move somewhere else. “Sure, lady. If you’re that desperate. If it blows up when you get rear-ended, though, don’t come blaming me. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

Now she holds her breath as the ignition stutters and gasps under her touch. She remembers when she bought this - spotting it on her neighbor’s lawn with the ‘for sale’ sign fresh on its windshield, back in ‘82. Rushing in and inquiring because Jonathan was two days from driving and it would give her an extra two hours at work a day. The woman had looked at her with the same expression as the mechanic - _really?_ \- as if she truly hadn’t expected anyone would take up the offer. 

It hasn’t exploded yet, though. A trusty little car, in all. When it starts. Her ten year old car, spluttering in the snow.

Eventually she gets going and the icy town coasts past. Library, town hall, police station. So similar to Hawkins it makes her heart hurt, and yet different enough that she can bear it. (Really, she can. It’s how she’s keeping on going.)

The parking lot outside the pharmacy is busy, and her heart sinks. Sure, it serves the convenience store and the realtors’ office too, but she can just _tell._ She has a bad feeling.

And sure enough, inside there’s a queue long enough that she probably won’t have time for any real lunch before Mickey expects her back, and won’t that be fun. She’s never fainted from hunger before, though she’s come close, and there’s always a first. Strangely enough she’s not sure Jonathan will have much sympathy. 

In front of her in the queue there’s a woman at least ten years older than her with eyes wide and permanently startled - and Joyce knows what that looks like, from looking in the mirror, so she can discern an extreme case of it. “Hey,” she says, uncomfortably, as the woman continues to stare at her. 

“You.” The woman says. 

“What?”

“You’ve seen.”

A chill runs down her spine. Seen? Seen what? It will probably come down to parking tickets or the high school baseball match, but Joyce’s instincts are finely honed and her anxiety meds have run out. She doesn’t take anything lightly.

“Seen what?” she breathes, eyes locked onto the woman’s. There’s the ding of the counter bell and the ring of someone entering the door behind her, bringing with them a flurry of cold air, but she’s divorced from all that. Nothing is as important as this moment right now.

“The angel.” The solemn expression splits into a rapturous smile, and as she inclines her head a crucifix slips from under her collar and glints in the fluorescent striplights. 

Joyce deflates as she sees it. It’s not- it’s not what she thought. It’s just the small-town religious fervor rearing its head in the Satanic Panic; it’s made worse by rivalry, apparently. She sighs.

-and the woman’s grin drops and her eyes sharpen. “You haven’t seen it. You saw a prophet- but not it. You would know if you had. It’s magnificent, and terrible. It devours worlds.”

Joyce feels her breath stutter in her chest at the woman’s unblinking gaze before the bell rings again - “Next customer, please?”, in an increasingly bored voice - and she’s jolted out of a trance. 

The woman is that customer and she proceeds to the counter like nothing ever happened, like she didn’t just spell out a prophecy of doom. She speaks inaudibly to the pharmacist, is handed a small orange bottle of pills, and exits without a backwards glance. Joyce swallows, mouth dry and stomach churning, before advancing with not a little amount of trepidation.

“Hi, Joyce Horowitz? I’d like to renew this prescription?” She presents the slip she was given less than two months ago.

“You have some ID?” The pharmacist eyes her over her horn-rimmed glasses.

“Sure.” She fumbles to get it out and thrusts it under the eagle-like gaze. “The doctor said there’d be some waiting for me here as soon as I ran out- my son was meant to collect it last week, but-”

“You’ll have to make another appointment.” The pharmacist’s gaze is unwavering, uncaring. The chronic bureaucratic case of not giving a shit. 

“What? But he said-”

“Dr. Anton is not in charge of this pharmacy, Ms. Horowitz.” The eyes glare at her over those deadly-sharp rims. “There’s clearly an error in this prescription. I’m amazed you managed to collect your medication the first time.”

“What error?” Joyce snatches back the slip, feeling increasingly desperate. For once - for _once_ \- she had everything under control. Will and El and Jonathan at school, Jonathan working shifts at the movie theatre in his free periods to supplement her pitiful income (much to her deep, painful frustration), her own panic attacks reduced to once a week. Regressing because of some fucking bureaucracy-

“See there?” The pharmacist taps a manicured nail on the box containing the medication’s name, filled in with Dr. Anton’s barely legible doctor’s scrawl. “He spelled ‘diazepam’ wrong. Wrote ‘diazipam’. Rudimentary stuff, really. I’m surprised. He never makes mistakes like that.” 

“So- what. I have to see him again?”

She nods. “Yes. Just book an appointment, the waitlist shouldn’t be too long.”

“Can I- can I book one now? Y’know, through you?” _Since you know him so well,_ Joyce thinks. 

“No.” She resists the urge to scream. “You’ll have to call up the clinic. I’m afraid you can’t make bookings in person.”

“Why the fuck not?” She clenches a fist and resists the rather tempting urge to punch it through the glass by the pharmacist’s face. 

“Kindly don’t speak to me like that,” the pharmacist is saying, but Joyce is already gone, storming out like she can’t get out of there fast enough, which she can’t. Jesus Christ. Bureaucracy- fucking bureaucracy- 

Outside she lights another cigarette and huffs out smoke into the frigid air. Shit, it’s cold. Colder than Hawkins ever was, that’s for sure. Not surprising when you move north, but it still catches her off guard. She huffs out smoke and suddenly she remembers what it tastes of. It tastes of Hawkins, of shared smokes under the bleachers and later, at her old kitchen table that’s now languishing in a skip. It tastes of warmth and comfort and something called shared trauma, that Jonathan had mentioned to her in an entirely different context but somehow fits a little too well. 

Shit. She’d hoped she was over this.

(But can you ever be over it? Really? They say - he said - that it does get a little easier, day by day, week by week. But when you’re her age- healing is hard.)

She stares out at the frosty street. Twilight’s drawing in already. The glaring beams of car headlights cast rippling reflections on the streets damp with slush and Joyce thinks bitterly that she used to like winter, before it all. She used to like the nights drawing in earlier and earlier. It gave her more time to look at the stars. 

Now she doesn’t have time to look at the stars at all, no matter how long the night is. She’s too busy watching for what’s down here with her.

A truck splashes past and sprays her with muddy water, and she hisses at the cold of it. “Fuck you too,” she mutters, inspecting the dirt on her pantyhose, ruing not for the first time the stupid regulations that require her to wear a dress. (Stupid, sexist Mickey, more like, but hate of that sort won’t get her anywhere.) When she looks up again it’s with a distant gaze, so distracted she almost doesn’t notice the familiar face driving past.

But she does, and her heart freezes colder than the snow gently beginning to fall around her. There’s no way it’s him. No way. Not all the way out in icy January Minnesota, when he died in humid July Indiana. Time and space transcended all at once - or at least, the confines of reality on her eyesight. It’s not him.

But there he is. Driving past without a care in the world, even a grin on his face. He’s in a convertible, the chill wind whipping his hair, his face smooth and clean-shaven. He looks different. He didn’t just step out of the pages of her memory, like they do in the movies. He’s changed. Healthy-looking, happier. 

But it’s him - but it can’t be, and it’s not.

But it’s him.

Hopper.

Before she has time to even consider the possibility that she’s losing her fucking mind for once and for all his car’s disappeared behind a towering, grimy truck. It feels like an age before it passes and she looks again, eyes desperate, cigarette all but forgotten, to find nothing but the nearly-empty street.

If he’d been there, there was no way she could have missed him going past. Which means he wasn’t.

And maybe she is going crazy.

But something about it- something about it felt the same as lights flickering in her old brown bungalow, back in November ‘83. It felt the same as looking in her son’s strangely dark eyes and knowing - _knowing_ , somehow, deep in her chest - that it wasn’t really him. 

She wouldn’t be surprised if she’s going crazy.

But maybe, just maybe, she’s not.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“You look lovely, Nancy.” 

Nancy shifts uncomfortably under her mom’s gaze, tugging at the hem of her dress where it falls just above her knees. It’s not about looking ‘lovely’ - but sure, she’ll take it. “Thanks,” she mutters, mouth dry. 

“When’s Steve picking you up?” 

“Right about now.” Nancy looks down the corridor at the silent, ominous front door. Her mom’s loading the dishwasher, her carefully coiffed curls bouncing as she moves back and forth. Nancy thinks back to the time she thought a perm would make her professional, acceptable, palatable to a bunch of misogynistic dinosaurs, and her stomach twists. “Hey, mom-”

“Yes, sweetie?” Karen straightens up with a ready smile on her painted lips. At Nancy’s expression, however, the smile slowly drops. “Is something the matter?”

“Do you think-” she starts, before the bright trill of the doorbell echoes through the house and her mom’s gaze moves to the door.

“That’ll be Steve. You have fun, okay? And stay safe. Don’t drink too much.”

“Mom! It’s his dad’s work party, it’s not exactly gonna be wild.” She shrugs her coat on and slips the strap of her bag over her shoulder, sliding her hand inside out of pure, instinctive habit. Her fingers curl around the cold, reassuring weight of her revolver. Her constant companion. She moves towards the door but halts at the last second, looking back at her mom. “Don’t fight with dad tonight. Please? Holly heard you the last time. She’s worried.”

There’s something unreadable in her mother’s eyes, but she nods anyway. “Okay. Now go! Have fun!” She practically shunts her out the door and into the path of Steve, the next awkward interaction she has to get through. Great.

“Hey,” Nancy says, softly, looking up at him in the gloomy porch light. He’s dressed up for the occasion, miraculously. Sharp, crisp black tie.

“Hey. You look- nice. You look nice.” Steve looks away hurriedly and coughs twice, and really he’s making a far bigger deal about this than he should be.

“Steve.” Her tone is warning. “Focus.”

“I am-” she hears him protest, as she heads over to the car without him. “I am focused. Focus? Who says I’m not focused? Jeez.”

She tugs down the overhead mirror and stares at herself in it - the bags under her eyes, already smudged with dropped mascara. Her hair, long and loose like it was two years ago, when Steve was an asshole and she didn’t know any better. “You okay?” he asks, as he drops into the driver’s seat. 

“Yeah. I’m fine.” He starts the car and she bites her lip. Even the thrum of the Merc’s engine is the same. She’s surprised his dad hasn’t bought him a new one by now. “So, how’s Robin?” she asks, forcing brightness into her tone.

Unusually, his voice is low. “I- uh, I haven’t seen her in a while. Y’know, I’ve been busy. With the internship, and stuff.”

Ah. Trouble in paradise. The two were thick as thieves right until Steve took up his father’s job offer and bam, no more Robin. (It doesn’t help that he seems to have switched Robin out for Nancy. It’s not romantic, not in any way, shape, or form - but there’s no way for Robin to know that.)

 _Tears for Fears_ is playing softly on the stereo, and almost unconsciously she reaches over to turn it up. Anything to cover up the fraught silence which threatens to descend - and it’s not a half bad record.

    _I made a fire and watching it burn_
    _Thought of your future_
    _With one foot in the past, now, just how long will it last?_
    _No, no, no, have you no ambition?_
    _My mother and my brothers used to breathe in clean in air_
    _And dreaming I'm a doctor_
    _It's hard to be a man when there's a gun in your hand..._

“This is really weird,” she bursts out, just as he says, “I’m glad it’s you doing this with me.”

He tears his eyes from the road and stares at her for a long, stricken second. She knows the feeling. “You- you’re glad?” she asks, barely daring to look at him. 

“Uh- well, yeah. Y’know, you’re just so- determined, and everything. If it all goes wrong you could shoot our way out in about ten seconds flat, so- yeah. I’m glad it’s you.”

To her endless surprise a smile worms its way onto her face. “I’m glad you asked me. Despite it being weird. Going to high school every day, studying for finals - none of it feels real, not after everything. But this does.”

He’s smiling too, and she’s glad they’ve reached some kind of accord, because they’ve arrived. Steve’s house appears looming out of the dark, lit up like the obnoxious Christmas tree outside the library that the town only just took down. There’s already the faint hum of music in the frosty air and as she follows him out of the car she sees that it’s bustling with guests. Mostly his dad’s age, rather than theirs, but that doesn’t matter. They’re not here to have a good time.

“Miss Wheeler,” Steve’s dad says smoothly pretty much as soon as they’re inside. “So glad you could make it.” He plucks two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter’s (waiter’s!) tray and hands them each one. “Go easy, remember. I don’t want you embarrassing yourselves in front of my colleagues and clients.” This is directed at Steve, mainly, but Nancy feels the sting of it anyway. 

She’s met him before, mostly back when she and Steve were dating but also a few times lately, in the last month or two. He’s tall, built like Steve and with a face like Steve, only sterner, harsher. Older and crueler. (The first time she saw him call his son ‘pathetic’ was the first time she realised how easy it had been for Steve to slide into those same patterns, routines, like slipping into a well-worn pair of gloves. And the first time she realised the strength it must have taken to fight his way out of them.)

After a distant smile at Nancy and another hard look at his son he strides off, no doubt to schmooze with more of the hard-faced assholes around them. Nancy takes a long sip of her champagne to steady her nerves and feels the bubbles sting the back of her throat. “Can’t believe he’s letting us drink, after the beer fiasco two years ago.”

Steve looks at her guiltily but doesn’t apologise for the thousandth time, for which she’s grateful. Instead he shrugs. “I guess he wants to prove he’s capable of raising a responsible son. Besides, no one would dare report him.” There’s definitely some bitterness in his expression. “Anyway, we should mingle, talk to people. Get on with, y’know, detecting.”

She smirks at him. “Go on, then. This is your party. Lead on.”

Four dull conversations later and they’ve got nowhere. Nancy’s had to invent college plans and a GPA better than what it’s currently languishing at and a reason for her and Steve to have ‘gotten back together,’ while each of the guests seem remarkably immune to sharing their own stories. It could be deflection or it could just be the nature of busybodies (she should know, since her mom is one too) but whatever, they’re not getting anywhere and this isn’t working.

“Steve,” she hisses, as they’re loitering on the side of the room, empty glasses long since discarded. “We have to try something else.”

“C’mon, Nance, we’ll think of something,” he says, and his face changes as the familiar nickname slips out. Hers does too.

“We’ve been at this for months now. They’re not just gonna tell us what they’re up to. We have to do something.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. He looks tired, she notices. Bags under his eyes to match her own, if not worse. A familiar sight on each of them. “Alright. Let’s talk about it after the party, okay? Wait until everyone’s gone.” Internally she groans at the thought of staying until then, as he disappears into the bathroom. 

His absence is her opportunity, however. Down the end of the hallway, just past the bathroom, his dad’s study door is slightly ajar. A minor miracle, because she knows from her visits and from Steve’s emphatic warning that it’s never unlocked. Strictly out of bounds since the day of his birth. (If that’s not suspicious, she doesn’t know what is.) But now- for whatever reason- it’s open.

It crosses her mind that it’s a trap, but then it crosses her mind that she’s been in life-or-death situations all too frequently in the last few years and therefore she’s definitely rather paranoid. It’s a cocktail party in the suburbs, not a convention of evil at Hawkins Lab. There’s no demogorgon waiting for her behind that door.

Still, she grips the gun in her purse as she creeps towards it, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder. The corridor behind her is empty, the strains of music growing fainter the further she goes. There’s a chill in her spine and is it her or is it getting darker? The chic, minimalist lamp on the hall table looks bright as ever but the distance its light travels seems weaker, shorter. The dark gap in the doorway is black as a void.

Another step, then two. It’s so close. So close that the creak of the hinge startles her, because before then the room was completely silent. The hinge creaks and there’s someone in there and it’s time to abort, now.

“Nancy!” 

She whips around to see Steve, emerged from the bathroom, staring at her furiously. He steps towards her, casting a nervous glance towards the study door. 

“What are you doing? You can’t- you can’t go in there.”

For some reason this makes her chest heat up with anger. She feels her cheeks flush hot. “Can’t I,” she says, voice flat. “Or are you just too scared of your fucking _dad_ -”

“Shh!” His hand moves to take her wrist and she shrugs him off. He just looks at her urgently. “Not here. We can talk outside, c’mon.”

She follows him out to the garden, past the pool shimmering in the dark. He ducks under the cover of the trees and finally turns to her with an expression that seems unreasonably pissed off. “Well?”

“Well what?” she says, deliberately. She crosses her arms and tries not to shiver. She won’t give him the satisfaction.

“What the hell were you doing in my dad’s study? You’re gonna-” He stops, apparently having realised the rising volume of his voice, and steps closer, speaks quieter. “You’re gonna get us caught, and all of this will have been for nothing.”

“For nothing? _For nothing?”_ Her voice is a furious hiss. “Steve, we _have_ nothing. We’ve been at this for months now! I’ve been coming to these stupid events with you, pretending to care about stocks and tax breaks and legislative changes, playing nice with your asshole dad who- who could’ve killed Barb! He could’ve had a hand in all that and if he did then there’s no point in _playing nice_ -”

“I’m not denying that! I’m not denying any of that!” Steve throws his hands up in the air. She stares at him hard, unforgiving. “Look, this is- this is delicate stuff, y’know? This isn’t something we can just barge into. My dad’s well-connected. Anything could happen to us- bad shit could happen to us-”

“‘Us’? You’re his son, he’s not gonna do anything to you.”

He looks at the muddy ground, patchy with snow. Either there’s something he’s not telling her, or else he knows she’s right and he can’t face it. She can’t imagine it being the former - John Harrington, while cold, doesn’t strike her as a Lonnie Byers or a Neil Hargrove. (And she’s heard horror stories about the both of them, horror stories of a wilder, drunken sort of violence, the sort of violence Steve’s dad would look down on with contempt.)

“Steve, I just- we’re meant to be doing something here. All this ‘undercover work’ isn’t working. Who knows what he and his company are doing- the sooner we stop them-”

“It doesn’t work like that, okay?” His eyes are pleading. “We take him down and someone else will take his place. If we wanna do this we gotta do it properly.”

She stares at him. He doesn’t get it - why doesn’t he get it? “You don’t understand. You-” Her eyes begin to sting and stubbornly she refuses to lift a hand to brush her tears away. “Doesn’t it bother you? All of it? What happened- what we fought- three times?”

His features have gone tight, pale. “Nancy-”

“It doesn’t get to you? You don’t have nightmares every night, wake up not knowing where you are, clutching for a weapon because you think that- that _thing_ is back?” 

She steps closer- then she sees something tortured in his eyes. 

“You do. You do have nightmares.” Her voice is soft. “So you do get it. This is the first time we know something they don’t, Steve. We have the advantage. We have to use it while we can.”

He’s shaking his head. “I never said- I don’t have nightmares. I’m fine.”

It’s defensive, familiar. The well-worn tone she heard all the time in that year they dated after the beginning of it all. The year they pretended everything was fine. She clenches her jaw and shakes her head at him, almost disgusted. “I should have known. God, you’re- you’re doing this all over again. Pretending like everything’s back to normal again.”

That gets to him. His eyes flare. “I’m not! I’m the one who started this whole thing with my dad! I’m just trying to be rational here-”

“Rational. Really. Nothing in the last two years has been _rational,_ Steve. Nothing. You- god, maybe you don’t even want to do this. I’m just- I’m just here to make you look good, is that it? Because your dad’s always approved of me, more than he’d approve of Robin or someone. I make you look good and your dad approves of you just a little bit more, you get that little bit of validation you’ve always wanted-”

“Stop,” he says - pleads - and there are vague tears shining in his eyes too. God, she made Steve Harrington cry, she thinks distantly, but she can’t stop now.

“You discovered this thing about him, right? And you couldn’t ignore it - you’re not that selfish, at least not anymore - but you want to. You regret even mentioning it to me, you haven’t told anyone else, you think that maybe if you let it go for long enough you’ll be able to forget about it-” She leans closer, feeling curiously and uncharacteristically cruel. “But you won’t. You’ll never be able to forget about it. You’ll work with your dad, get promoted, get brought into the fold if he trusts you enough, but even if he doesn’t - you’ll know. You’ll know there’s something wrong. You’ll know you’re causing something awful, just by staying silent, and it’ll-” Her voice breaks. “It’ll haunt you forever. Trust me, I know.”

The pool- the fucking pool, the one where Barb faced a monster and cried out for Nancy’s help while she was too busy having sex with King Steve- it’s staring at her from over his shoulder, glaring and blue. She flinches like it’s got eyes, like it’s staring at her. 

(Not like the eye she’d found drawn on her locker earlier that day, in viscous black paint. She’d felt a twinge of unease and nothing more. Now- how can it be possible to feel watched by something that doesn’t have eyes?)

“Nancy can you just… let me do this. My way. I promise, we can try your way if it doesn’t work for much longer but I know these people, this company. I know what they’re like and I know how to beat them. I know I’m not good at much but I just wish-”

Her mind has gone blank. It’s almost like she can- like she can _see_ Barb, sitting there on the edge of the diving board like in Jonathan’s photos. The steam from the heated pool rising like smoke around her, her bloody finger dripping into the crystal water. _God_ , she thinks, and resists the urge to call out a warning. _Barb! Barb, run!_ She finds herself mouthing it, unable to tear her eyes away from the vision of the shadow rising behind her. The lights of the pool and the lights of the party all going dark, all at once.

“-I wish you’d trust me,” Steve finishes, and she snaps back to reality. “Do you trust me?” Thankfully - or not - he doesn’t seem to have noticed her distant gaze. When she looks back at the pool, the diving board is empty and the lights are shining bright. 

“Yeah,” she says, distractedly. “I do.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“Thanks for meeting with me, m’lord.” Dustin grins across the table at Mr. Clarke, shifting uncomfortably on the red booth seating, his milkshake piled nearly tall enough to block out his face. 

“You’re welcome, Dustin. What can I do for you?” To his credit, he doesn’t sound all that reluctant. Dustin knows he’s plagued the teacher with enough weird questions over the years that he should be glad to be shot of him - but here they are in a milkshake bar, pondering weird questions again. 

(Mr. Clarke should _definitely_ be an agony aunt. Uncle. For science. A science agony uncle? Is that a thing? It should absolutely be a thing.)

“Well, I just have some questions-”

Mr. Clarke takes a very loud, very long slurp of his milkshake, as if bracing himself. 

“My first one is, if you were a secret government agency and you were forced to vacate your current offices, where would you hide anything you couldn’t take with you? In that same building? Hypothetically, of course.”

He doesn’t even look surprised anymore. He just sighs. “Dustin, I’m a middle school science teacher. I know about science, I don’t know about- secret government agencies-” He pulls a face Dustin’s pretty sure he’s never seen him make before.

“But… say you did. Let’s pretend you’re a member of this secret government agency. You’re smart enough. They’d be a fool not to hire you.”

“Well, Dustin…” Flattery is clearly getting him _some_ where, because the words keep on coming. “It depends what the offices were going to be used for afterwards. If they were being reused or refurbished I’d have to be a lot more careful, because-”

“They’re not,” he interrupts, and adds quickly, “Hypothetically.”

“Okay, well, _hypothetically,_ ” Mr. Clarke looks at him disapprovingly over his milkshake, “Air ducts would be my first choice. If the building’s not being used, no one will notice a blockage. Or, depending on the ceiling type, I could just remove the foam board, store things above it, and then replace it - in most office buildings there’s a large hollow gap between the ceiling and the floor above, plenty big enough for secret storage. I wouldn’t go for anything like maintenance cupboards - too obvious.”

“Great, amazing.” Dustin’s itching to write all this down but Mr. Clarke’s already more than a little suspicious. He doesn’t want to ruin his only font of knowledge in this dry, unintelligent town.

“What is this for, exactly? Like I said, it’s not exactly my area-”

“How about this,” he says, bulldozing right on through. “Say there were, like, a bunch of people out there who had these abilities. Like, moving shit with your mind and stuff.”

“ _Dustin_ , language.”

“Sorry, m’lord. Anyway, say they were out there. Their powers have to do with energy, right? Different forms of energy. It’s gotta take a large amount of energy to move something with your mind. So I was thinking - purely hypothetically - is that a way we could track these people? By looking for these energy spikes?”

The suspicion has melted from Mr. Clarke’s face. He looks involved, intrigued, like he always did when Dustin posed him a particularly tricky physics question in class. _There’s_ the Mr. Clarke he used to know. “Okay, well, it’s a decent theory. The energy spikes would have to be massive, though, and differentiating them from other generators of energy would be tricky. You might think you’ve found one and then you walk straight into a nuclear power plant.”

Dustin nods. “Exactly. So you’d need a way of isolating only psionic energy, when you were looking.”

“Well, if these people do have psionic powers, that’s gotta have a whole different energy signature to anything else. I mean, it’s a whole new range of science… we don’t have anything like the technology to measure it. I suppose…” Mr Clarke takes another thoughtful slurp of his milkshake. “You could look at the brainwaves of these people, but you’d need to use electroencephalography.”

“Electro-what?”

“An EEG.” Ah. “That’s not a way of locating them from afar, though. I suppose it would depend on how these powers worked. They could emit radiation, which is a bit more specific than just ‘energy’ - remember when we learnt about the different types of energy? - so there’s less chance of confusion. Or-”

Radiation. Dustin remembers talk of ‘background radiation’, and suiting themselves up in scarves and masks and layers upon layers before the raid in the tunnels. It could detect _something_ , sure, if they rigged up some massive-scale geiger counter, but it might not be something any of them want to find. And El and her powers aren’t linked to the Upside Down - are they?

It could be worth a try.

“-electro-magnetic spectrum,” Mr. Clarke is saying. “Of course, if they hadn’t discontinued the High Energy Astronomy Observatory series in ‘81, that would be perfect.”

“What’s that?”

“A series of satellites, investigating gamma rays, cosmic rays, and X-rays. Though I suppose if we’re working on an international level, there’s still the EXOSAT. The Europeans’ version of the HEAO series.”

As great as that sounds, Dustin’s not sure the combined influence of him and Robin can even get them into the now-decommissioned Hawkins Lab, let alone the operating systems of a foreign space agency’s satellite. Maybe they should hire a private detective instead. He’s pretty sure he’s got enough money - how much can it cost, really? - though he was saving that for a new part for Cerebro.

“Oh.” He tries not to look too dejected. 

“Hey, I’m sure you’ll think of something. What is this for, anyway - English class? A writing assignment? It would make a neat comic book, for sure.”

He’s sure it would. He’s also sure he’d be an ex-comic book writer, because he’d be _disappeared_ within about five minutes. Which is why, when he looks across the table at Mr. Clarke and burns to tell him the truth, he stays silent instead. He’s rather fond of his old science teacher, after all, and would rather not see him get a bullet in the head.

He gulps at his own thought and tries to think of something to say. The cream on top of his strawberry milkshake is melting, but he doesn’t really want to touch it anymore. He feels more than a little nauseous at the memory of the government men.

“Dustin? Are you alright?”

With a smile brighter than he feels, Dustin nods. “Yes, m’lord. How’s the chocolate?”

Mr. Clarke has nearly finished it. “Excellent, actually. I should come here more often.” He regards Dustin frankly. “How is Will getting on?”

“He’s doing… fine.” To tell the truth, he doesn’t really know. He hasn’t spoken to him in a while, despite how close they’d gotten in those few sunny weeks before Dustin went off to camp, when they were the only two without girlfriends. Now Dustin has Suzie and that’s who he talks to on Cerebro, not Will or El. He chews on his lip and looks at the sticky red table. 

“Make sure you don’t lose touch with him, Dustin. I know how it is. You’re all getting older, friends moving away or getting into different things, but those first few friends you make in life are some of the most important ones. You’ve been through a lot together, after all.”

Dustin finds himself smiling a little hysterically and he has to force it off his face. The effect is probably rather freakish. But inwardly the smile remains: _You don’t know the half of it, Mr. Clarke._

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

The fries on her plate are greasy and what her mother would call ‘unappetising’, but Max wolfs them down anyway. She’s starving, she realises, having eaten two packets of chips for lunch and a blueberry pop-tart for breakfast. Not exactly a healthy lifestyle, but her mom’s stopped caring what she eats and Max is rarely home for dinner, so grease will have to do.

Mike is eyeing her across the lacquered red table, chewing on his hamburger with a great deal more decorum. “You eat like my sister,” he says finally. “She’s six.”

“So?” Max shoves another handful of fries coated in mustard into her mouth just to spite him. “Out of interest,” she says with her mouth full, then has to wait until she’s swallowed it before her mouth will let her continue, “why is your sister so much younger than the rest of you? I mean, your dad’s not exactly irresistible.”

“Ew. Gross. Stop making me think about my parents’ sex life.” He wrinkles his nose and steals a fry off her plate, making her glower in return. “I dunno, I guess they’re attracted to each other? God, this is a weird conversation. Can we, uh, move on?”

She smirks into her milkshake. “Sure. Are you attracted to El?”

“Yeah, she’s my-” She watches his face turn bright red as his automatic answer grinds to a halt. “Fuck you, Max, ugh! Yes, I am, so what? She’s my girlfriend, that’s allowed, isn’t it?”

She shrugs. “Sure. I’m just saying, are you gonna stop being attracted to her when she’s, like, forty?”

He shakes his head vehemently. “No, we’re forever.”

Okay, so that’s naive. Max tries not to roll her eyes. “Exactly. So your parents are allowed to be attracted to each other.”

“But- they’re nothing like me and El. Really, they’re not. They argue all the time.”

She frowns. “Are they getting a divorce?”

The expression that comes onto his face is so adorably confused that she regrets she said anything at all. Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t, but she probably shouldn’t have mentioned it. “They’re not like-” he starts, then abruptly cuts himself off.

She can guess what he was going to say. “Not like my parents, you mean. Or Will’s.”

“Max, I didn’t-”

“It’s fine,” she says, though she’s not sure she means it. His face is honestly contrite, though, so she’s willing to let it go. “Just make sure you don’t say anything like what you were gonna say around Will. He has enough issues with his dad as it is.”

For a moment, it looks like Mike is gonna shout at her for acting like she knows Will better than he does. His cheeks flush hot with anger and he opens his mouth- but nothing comes out. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Okay.”

She smiles at him and - in a foreign gesture of goodwill - pushes her plastic basket of fries towards him. “Want some more?”

Eagerly he accepts, and in return she takes a healthy-sized bite of his burger. It’s good, except for the amount of ketchup generously doused all over it. Gross - but she can feel her organs crying out in joy as she consumes her first vegetable of the day, a thin strip of lettuce.

“I miss Will,” he says, suddenly. “El too, obviously, but Will- he’s always been there. Since kindergarten. And their house- I spent hours at their house. I remember once I broke my arm, and my dad was at work, and for some reason they couldn’t get hold of my mom, so it was Mrs. Byers who came with me to the hospital. Afterwards I-” His voice wavers. “I spent the whole night wishing, while I was doped up on painkillers and my mom finally came to get me, that Mrs. Byers was my mom instead. And I didn’t mean it, because my mom’s great, really, but that night I just wished…” He swallows and studies the table. “Sorry.”

And he should be sorry, because who is he to complain? Her own mom is kind but inattentive, her dad resides in a crack den in California, and her stepdad thinks hurting people is fun. Mike’s got it easy. The number of times Max has wished Joyce would take her in too, alongside El-

It doesn’t bear thinking about, really it doesn’t. If she got a cent for every time, she’d be rich and able to live on her own. But she doesn’t, and she’s not.

“Let’s check out their old house,” she says suddenly, on impulse. “You know, check up on the neighbors. We can tell El and Will all about it.”

Mike perks up dramatically, which wasn’t exactly her intention - but then again, she thinks, maybe it was. She demolishes the rest of his burger and her fries and then they’re off, her hopping on the back of his bike like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It feels like it, after all these months of skipping school with him. The bitter days of him refusing to talk to her are long over, though she’s still not sure they qualify as friends.

The Byers’ house - though it’s not theirs, not anymore - is quiet and dark at the end of the road. Sometimes Max thinks about it, what she’s been told of what happened in 1983, what she’s managed to fill into the gaps. Thinks about Will running for his life down this road and finding his house exactly like this - cold, and dark, and empty. 

Because that’s what it is. Empty.

There’s no car in the driveway, no light on the porch. No scattered garden furniture, no curtains in the windows. No sign of life at all, and that’s-

“Weird,” Mike says, slowing the bike to a stop under the cover of the trees. “Will said someone definitely bought it.”

That someone’s long gone now, whoever they were. There’s something more than a little sinister about the place. The trees rustling faintly in the wind, the dark sky arching up above them into a black void. Max shivers.

Mike looks around at her, a strange expression on his face. She thinks it might be concern, or sympathy, or some combination thereof, which she _really_ doesn’t like, so she slides off the back of his bike with more bravado than she feels. 

“C’mon, then. Let’s check it out.”

She hears the thud of his bike falling as he hurries to catch up with her, clearly not wanting to be outdone. He looks pale, washed-out in the faint orange glow of the nearby streetlamp. It casts eerie shadows over his face.

The house remains stubbornly dark as they approach it. She’s really not sure what they’re gonna find, now that they’re here. Probably nothing - and in the dark, that feels like best-case-scenario. Mike’s hand is trembling slightly as he reaches for the doorbell. She pretends like she doesn’t notice. He presses it once, lightly, and then-

The porch is flooded with light. They look around, startled, wide-eyed, at the windows now lit with a warm glow, the lamp by the door now burning bright. So bright it’s like the sun’s come up, only the sky is still dark. 

“Hi,” the woman who opens the door says. “Can I help you?”

She’s nothing like Mrs. Byers. She’s tall, for one, while Mrs. Byers is no taller than Max’s puny 5’2. Blonde, rather than brunette. Blue eyes and a smile that feels entirely too fake. 

Max flounders. What’s she supposed to say? What’s their excuse? The best she can think of is _trick or treat!_ and it’s January. Shit.

“Hey, we’re collecting for the Moral Majority, to end the Satanism inherent in our schools and to reintroduce Christianity into the curriculum. Can we have a few seconds of your time?”

The woman’s smile drops and the door is slammed in their faces faster than Max can blink at Mike’s quick thinking. She waits until they’re a safe distance away before she starts to laugh - a horrified, pent-up laugh, almost hysterical because something still doesn’t feel right. “The Moral Majority? _Seriously?_ ”

He cracks a grin as he crouches to pick up his bike. “Lucky guess. Hawkins may be pretty conservative but even Pastor Jeffries wouldn’t let Jerry Falwell in his house.”

She pulls her hood up and puts on a deep southern accent. “ _You’re going to hell for playing dungeons and dragons, evil children!”_

Mike smirks. “No, that’s Pat Pulling. You know my dad was actually watching her on TV the other day? I told him it’s all bullshit, and then he was mad I swore.”

She climbs back up on his bike, casts a quick glance over her shoulder again. The house is lit up like it was never dark in the first place, like they were seeing things before. But they weren’t. She knows they weren’t. There’s not much she can trust in this world - but she can trust her eyes. Something’s going on here, she knows it. And unless the woman was just sitting there in the dark and managed to flick on all the lights in the house at once at the first touch of the doorbell, it’s not something good.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

The party is lively, and loud. Jonathan ducks through the doorway and - as per usual - tries to stick to the wall as tight as possible. But it doesn’t work, because who comes bursting through the crowd? - none other than Marcus fucking Wright, the guy whose house this is.

“Horowitz!” he shouts, and claps him on the shoulder. Jonathan tries not to buckle under the force of his hand, because Marcus is _strong._ Typical jock and all that shit, except for some reason he actually seems to enjoy Jonathan’s company, which has never happened before. “Glad you could make it!” He presses a beer into his hand and steers him deeper into the gathering, and further away from the relative safety of the walls. “C’mon, I wanna introduce you to someone.”

“I told you, man, I have a girlfriend-”

“Friendly! Friendly, I swear!” Marcus grins. He’s got lipstick on his cheek, stark red against his dark skin. “Alright, you got me, she seems interested and I promised her I’d hook you two up.”

Jonathan wrinkles his nose. “Stop. And are you sure it was me she was-”

“Uh, yeah. She said ‘the pale guy whose name begins with J and likes the Talking Heads’. That’s _you_ , pal. Go nuts.”

“I have a girlfriend,” he says again. “I’m sure she’s- she’s really nice-”

Marcus claps him on the shoulder again and he winces. “Yeah, sure, Jon. Fair enough. Just thought I’d let you know.” Marcus walks off leaving Jonathan very alone by the liquor table, which he contemplates with a sigh. He doesn’t want to get drunk, really he doesn’t, but it’s the only way he’s gonna make it through this party and he promised Marcus he’d stay for at least forty minutes. 

He promised Nancy too, over the phone. He’d told her his plans, _Marcus is dragging me to his stupid party tomorrow night,_ and she’d lit up. Like she was genuinely pleased for him, like she wanted him to make more friends or whatever. Some small part of him wondered - still wonders - if she doesn’t just want him to move on. Find someone else, let her go. Let her fall back into Steve’s arms, maybe, only he’s only just gotten over this whole jealousy thing and he’s really not keen to start it all up again. 

He misses her. That’s it. He’s not gonna- find someone else. No way. Not even if they like the Talking Heads.

    _'Cause the crowd all love pulling dolly by the hair_
    _By the hair_
    _And she wonders how she ever got here_
    _As she goes under again_

Duran Duran, again. Jesus. Are they really the only band American high schoolers know? Jonathan would kill for some New Order, maybe The Cure, but apparently he’s cursed to hear _Girls on Film_ every single one of his teenage years.

“It sucks, right?”

He looks around to see a girl leaning over the table arrayed with bottles, smiling wryly at him through a curtain of dark hair. “What does?” He has to shout almost to be heard over the music.

“Duran fucking Duran. I’m so tired of Duran Duran!”

A smile breaks out on his face despite himself. “Same. I’d kill to hear a single song by The Smiths right about now.”

She rounds the table and grins up at him. “Favorite song by them?”

“ _Handsome Devil,_ ” he answers immediately. Her face is blank. “John Peel sessions? 1983? C’mon.”

She shrugs. “Sorry, guess you’re a bigger fan than me. I’m more into the Talking Heads anyway.”

Ah. It clicks. Great. The realisation must show on his face because her own features droop. “I’m sorry- Marcus told me- I have a girlfriend.”

“Oh. Is she in our year?”

“Uh- yeah. But not here. Back in Haw- where I moved from.” Hawkins is still a buzzword, even here, even seven months later. It wouldn’t have been, not now they’re so far north, but he’d mentioned it at school one day and a guy whose mom lives in Indianapolis overheard and gasped, _Oh, are you a satanist, then?,_ because apparently in a small town if a kid dies and comes back to life and there’s a government coverup and then the mall fucking ‘explodes’ (quote unquote) it means everyone who lives there worships Satan. And then it caught on, and if it wasn’t for Marcus being the only nice jock on the planet Jonathan would be pretty lonely right about now.

“Oh, that’s cool. Are you gonna go to college together or something?”

He winces. College. He really, really doesn’t want to think about college right now. Not least because Nancy doesn’t want to go to NYU, she wants to go to Northwestern, and Illinois is a long way away from New York. There are other reasons too, but he’s not gonna get into those with as-yet-unnamed girl-who-likes-the-Talking-Heads. “No, I- uh, I wanna go to NYU, and she- well, she doesn’t.”

“NYU? Oh my god.” She turns and yells over the music at a guy across the room. “Hey, Luke! Get over here!” He wanders over, hands in his pockets, a very tangible smell of weed rolling off him.

“Hey, man. Angela? What is it?”

She grins again. “This guy-” she taps Jonathan on the shoulder, rather lighter than Marcus did “-is going to NYU. Like you.”

“No way!” Luke extends a hand for him to shake and he does, feeling a little foolish as he does so. “I’m Luke. What course d’ya wanna do?”

“Jonathan. I- uh, photography.” He’s not used to this, to people being genuinely interested. It feels strange. “You?”

“Literature. I’m just hoping I get the grades, y’know? My GPA’s pretty shit right now.”

“No, I’m- I’m sure it’s not that bad.” He gives Luke an uneasy smile and takes another swig of his beer. It’s disappearing fast, for sure. He can already feel his head beginning to swim. And he must be nearly drunk, because for some awful reason he’s compelled to continue. “I don’t know, I mean- sometimes I think it would be better if I didn’t get in.”

“What?” Angela says, as Luke says, “Why?”

He shrugs. It was a stupid thing to say. “I don’t know, just- money. Just- money.”

Luke nods. “I get it, man. Shit’s expensive. You wanna go outside for a smoke?”

“Sure,” he ends up saying, and then he’s standing out there in the frigid snow as smoke swirls around them and Angela persists in attempting to hit on him, advances which he pointedly rejects. They don’t touch on the money thing again, thank god, because Luke misinterpreted it more than a little. Instead he finishes two more beers and is pleasantly warm inside by the time he looks at his watch and realises _shit_ , it’s way past his allotted forty minutes and he’s nearly eighteen but his mom’s been through a lot so she’s allowed to set a curfew. 

“I gotta go,” he says, to no one in particular. Luke and Angela are now passionately making out on Marcus’ dad’s couch to the tune of _When Doves Cry_ and there’s nothing for it but to grab his coat and leave. He almost misses Luke’s call after him - “Hey, if we both get in we should totally smoke some weed together sometime!” - on his brief break from Angela’s lips. Jonathan shrugs, _Sure!_ , and heads back out into the cold, but there’s a smile nudging at his face. _So this is what being a teenager feels like_ , he thinks, and sure it’s not all that fun, it’s not romantic like in the movies, but it feels normal and in his life that’s basically reaching nirvana.

He can’t drive, of course. The walk is a long one but not unmanageable, not when everything is faintly hazy and he’s got his walkman. He has to fumble with it once, twice, before his cold, drunk fingers can operate the buttons, but then he does and he sings along quietly to Morrissey’s croon all the way home.

His mom is waiting for him. 

His mom is waiting for him and he drops his keys with a clink loud in the silence, and she looks at him as she leans against the wall with the expression she’s worn almost every day for the last seven months. It’s not one recognisable emotion. It’s fifty different things wrapped in one - anxiety, exhaustion, concern, grief, maybe some gladness at seeing him, maybe some annoyance that he’s home so late. He doesn’t want to deal with it, not tonight. He crosses the room without looking at her and fetches a glass from the cupboard, holds it under the kitchen tap. The stream misses the glass at first and soaks his hand, at which he lets out a quiet _fuck_. He’s drunker than he realised.

“Jonathan-” she starts, when it’s clear he’s not going to speak first.

Slowly he turns to look at her. She’s followed him to the kitchen, hovering in the doorway, her fingers toying with her sleeve. A typical sign, because he notices these things now. He has to. 

“How was it?” she tries.

“Good. It was- it was actually good.” He stubbornly refuses to acknowledge his lateness, and waits for her to do it for him. Make her the bad guy for a change.

“Jonathan-” She sighs. She doesn’t _want_ to be the bad guy, that’s the thing. She never does. But she sets these boundaries and just gets disappointed when they’re crossed, instead of angry. He really wishes she’d just get angry. It might make them all feel better. “You’re an hour late. I was- I was worried.”

Of course she was. How could she not be? He bites his lip. “Sorry, Mom. I- I lost track of the time.”

“I get that you’re a teenager, you wanna go to parties, god knows I went to enough of them when I was your age, but I- you know it’s different for us.”

He tenses. “Why? Why does it have to be different? Wasn’t that why we moved here in the first place, so we could be _normal_ again?”

Her face falls. “Jonathan-” she says again, and he really needs her to stop saying his name like that, like he’s constantly breaking her heart, because it makes him feel like Lonnie and he vows everyday to be nothing like him.

“I’m going to bed,” he says abruptly, rudely, and sets down the glass so hard it shatters in his hand.

“Jonathan!” his mom shouts, _shouts,_ and there’s a dim sting of pain in his palm but it’s drowned out by relief, mainly - relief that his mom can actually still feel something other than fear. She rushes forward with a cloth and dabs at his hand, and it comes away red. “You gotta be more careful. How much did you have to drink?”

Her tone is soft but it feels accusatory anyway. _Lonnie_ , his mind bitterly supplies again. _How much did you drink? Jesus, you stink of beer. No, don’t touch me, you know we’re behind on the electricity bill? And you were out at the goddamn bar all night, wasting god knows how much money-_

He pulls away. And then again, when she tries to follow him. “Just- just stop. _Stop._ I’m fine. Jesus, I’m- I’m fine. I won’t be hungover, if that’s what’s wrong. I can still take Will and El to school, god forbid they bike there-”

She frowns. “Sorry, _what?_ Do you have some sort of problem with driving the kids to school?”

“‘Kids’! Exactly! Mom, they’re four years younger than me. I’m still a goddamn kid, too, but I’m not allowed to be one, am I? I have to drive them to school, I have to pick them up, I have to get your meds-”

“Is that what this is about?” She’s pulled away from him, recoiled with a mix of offence and anger swirling in her eyes. “My medication? Look, it’s not that big of a deal-”

“But it is, isn’t it? It is. I can’t ever be a normal teenager, you’re right. I gotta do all this stuff and sure, that’s fine, but sometimes-” He throws his hands up. He doesn’t know how to say this - he’s not even sure of what he’s trying to say. Something about how he should be allowed to make mistakes, but that feels wrong. In their world - which isn’t normal, that’s categorically true - mistakes get you killed.

“Sometimes what?” Her voice is quiet but there’s unmistakably a challenge in it. “I’m trying my goddamn best here, Jonathan. You know that. And I wish- I wish it was different. I wish you could just be a kid. I want you to be. But sometimes I need you- and Will and El need you-”

If she hadn’t married Lonnie in the first place, if she’d married someone who’d actually be there the whole way through, someone who wouldn’t belittle or hurt them, things would be different. But then again, he reflects, that’s his fault too. If his mom hadn’t got pregnant with him she wouldn’t have had to marry Lonnie and all their lives would be very different.

“Yeah, I know. I’m trying too. Just- let me enjoy my senior year, okay? After that I- I’ll be around.”

She’s frowning. “What? You- you’re going to college. You’re not gonna be _around._ ”

He smiles bitterly. “Mom, we both know I’m not going.”

“No, no, we don’t.” Her voice is rising. “No, we goddamn don’t, Jonathan, you’re going to college-”

“We can’t afford it! We can’t afford it and besides, I’m not gonna leave you and Will and El alone, you just said yourself you rely on me-”

For one awful moment she looks like she’s about to cry. Her face crumples and his frustration immediately dissolves, because he hates to see her cry. He always has. 

He carefully softens his voice. “What are you gonna do when I’m gone, huh? You need my income, too. We were barely scraping by without El, and now she’s here, another mouth to feed-” he winces as it leaves his mouth, it sounds callous and cold, but it’s true, she’s expensive “-and you can’t make it without me.”

“We’ll manage,” she says, tightly. “We’ll think of something.”

“ _The only way you’ll make it is if I stay._ You know that. You _know_ that.”

“Enough!” Her voice is unexpectedly loud, forceful in the nighttime silence. She’s trembling - not with anxiety, not this time. It’s anger. “Enough. I’m not- I’m not listening to this. You’re going to college, Jonathan, you’ve been dreaming about it since you were six-”

“Exactly! I was six! I was a kid, it was a kid’s pipe dream-”

“Don’t give me that. Don’t go all cynical, please, you just said you’re still a kid, you’re allowed to- to aspire to things-” She looks desperate. “Jonathan, I did a semester of college and then I dropped out, and I’ve never regretted anything more in my life. It _ruined_ my life. Sure, I wouldn’t trade you guys for the world but when I think of all the things I could have done-”

“I’m not you, Mom!”

She shakes her head. She just looks sad. “Oh, Jonathan, you’re so much like me. More like me than Will is, sometimes. He’s- I don’t know where he gets it from, certainly not Lonnie, but he’s different to us. You can’t make my mistakes.”

What the fuck does that even mean? “I’m not you!” he shouts again, and maybe it’s finally getting through to her because she flinches. The shame rushes in less than a moment after the satisfaction and all he wants to do is leave and bury his head in his pillow but he can’t, not yet. “I’m not you and you always do this! You make me feel guilty for not doing enough but then you push me away when I try, and then I’m stuck in the middle and sometimes it’s like I’m not even your kid!”

She recoils like he’s hit her. She’s definitely on the brink of tears and he regrets his words as he says them but he can’t stop them. They just come flooding out. 

“I love you,” he says. “But I don’t- I don’t know what the fuck you want from me! I just wish you’d let me help, help properly, not just driving Will and El to school. You’re so stubborn you can’t even see you need the help-”

She turns away, lips pressed in a thin line. He scoffs.

“I’m going to bed.” 

“Jonathan- Jonathan! Don’t walk away from me- please- we have to talk about this.”

He doesn’t look back at her, just scrubs a hand over his face. He’s left the mess of broken glass behind him, he realises, but he can’t bring himself to meekly submit, to crouch down and look her in the eye. “We have talked about this. I’m tired.” 

He hears her sigh and she’s definitely crying now, but he just walks on. Past the door to Will and El’s room, which he quickly peers around like he always does. (His mom’s not the only one with nervous tics.) They’re both asleep. Will’s got his headphones still on his head, but he’s snoring faintly. It’s enough to bring a faint smile to his face, to see his brother in the position he’s found himself in oh so often, and he pulls the door to - not closed, never closed - with a gentle touch. 

And then he goes to the phone in the wall at the end of the hallway and dials off by heart. He knows his mom might be listening - but he’s feeling equally sad and equally spiteful so he can’t bring himself to care. There’s a long moment of waiting, tense, eager, before-

“Hello?”

Nancy’s voice is hushed - of course, they’re an hour ahead, it’s past midnight in Hawkins - but the very sound of it sends a rush of warmth through him. God, he’s missed her. He’s missed her so much and this isn’t enough, just talking on the phone. He just wants to be around her, with her, able to run his hands through her hair, to take her hand. 

“Nancy, hey.”

“Jonathan,” she breathes. Her voice is a little rough, like she’s been crying. He stiffens. “How- how are you? How was the party?”

“It was good- but are you okay? Nance, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s- it’s nothing.” She’s lying, lying through her teeth, and he wishes people would just talk to him. “I- Well. I went to Steve’s dad’s party, and…”

 _And what_ , he has to ask, but suddenly he doesn’t want to. Steve’s back in her life, for some reason, and he’s not sure what it means but it scares him slightly. They’re not gonna get back together, everyone’s taken great pains to assure him of that, he _knows_ that, but it’s weird. It’s weird. 

“And I just-” she says, but then cuts herself off. Like she’s hiding something. Like there’s something she doesn’t want him to know. “I miss you. And- things are happening.” _Things._ There’s only one thing that can mean, really, given her silence, given the nervous tone of her voice. It’s something that will make his mom’s hands shake. “Things are happening and Steve’s not _doing_ anything, he says we should wait, but I don’t think-” There’s a silence and he pictures her cradling the phone to her ear, her huge eyes red-rimmed and blue, her throat dipping as she swallows. “I want to do something. I want to- to take this shit into my own hands, but if I screw up then it’s my fault and I don’t want to put us in danger but I can’t just do _nothing_ -”

“Do it,” he says. “Whatever it is.” He’s tired of doing nothing. He’s tired of letting himself get swept along - by Nancy, true, but also by his mom, by Will, by necessity and need and letting things spiral until someone _has_ to do something and that someone’s never him. “If you think something’s gotta be done, just do it. I don’t know what the stakes are but isn’t- isn’t it better to ask for forgiveness, instead of permission?”

“You stole that from somewhere,” she smiles into the phone, and he feels the weight on his heart lighten. Her tone turns more serious, “Do you really mean it? I don’t know what I expected you to say.”

“I don’t know, I just- I just find myself thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I’d- I don’t know, if I’d done more for Mom, for Will, if I’d done _something_ , then maybe things would be better. Maybe we wouldn’t have moved.”

“Jonathan- you can’t blame yourself. You _can’t_. None of it was your fault, none of it.”

“I didn’t say it was my fault,” he says, though he knows it was. If he’d been there that first awful night, the night Will faced the monster all alone, the night that changed all their lives-

“But that’s what you think. And you’re wrong.”

He just shakes his head silently, knowing she can’t see him. They talk for another twenty minutes or so, about nothing in particular. What she’s said sticks in his brain and he knows there’s more going on, but he can’t ask her over the phone. Who knows who might be listening. Who knows who’s reading their mail, who knows who’s on the radio waves. Nothing is safe and that’s why it stings so much that she’s so far away, because there’s no honesty in just hearing her voice. There’s no truth between them anymore, because they’re both so defined by everything that happened and now they just- can’t talk about it, at all. Like a whole section of their lives has been erased, just _gone_ , blacked out like a censored government document. Marked _classified._

When he’s hung up he looks at the closed door of his room, but instead he walks the other way, back down the corridor, back towards the kitchen where his mom is still sitting, smoking a cigarette, staring emptily out into space. 

“Hey,” he says, softly, and she jumps, hastily brushes tears away from her eyes with her thumb. He pretends not to notice. He crosses to the kettle, makes her tea. Presses it into her hands and touches her shoulder, just gently, just briefly. She leans into his touch. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled.”

“Jonathan-”

“Don’t stay up too late, okay?” 

She just looks at him without saying anything. He touches her shoulder again, then turns and goes back the way he came, back down the corridor to his room.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Nancy parks her car three blocks away and cuts through the trees instead of walking down the road. If she’s caught, she’s screwed, to put it mildly. Everything will go horribly, horribly wrong - so she’s not gonna get caught. 

It’s easy enough to reach through the bars and flick the latch of the gate. She’s got thin wrists; John Harrington’s security measures aren’t designed for petite teenage girls. She ducks through it, casts a furtive glance around. The yard is empty, the pool glowing bright in the dark, the trees looming and silent. She crosses the yard and peers through the glass. The wide, modern living room is empty, still a mess from the party. Champagne flutes strewn everywhere, plates lying discarded, canapes mouldering on the sofa. Left until morning, or are they cleaning up another room first? 

She bites her lip, but she’s come all this way. She’s not leaving, not now. She tries her luck on the sliding door and to her eternal surprise it glides open soundlessly, allowing her to creep inside. 

She knows her way to the study - she was here only a few hours ago. She doesn’t meet anyone on her way, only that strange darkened hallway that makes her shiver. But this time no one interrupts her. This time she slips through the open door and makes it inside.

It’s just a study, really, the same as her dad’s only classier. Dark wooden panelling, an emeralite lamp, a tall looming filing cabinet. She heads straight for it and casts the beam of the flashlight over the files, flicking past A through G until she finds what she’s looking for. The H folder is unsurprisingly thick and she has to steel herself before opening it. Has to consider that this is the father of her ex-boyfriend, the man she’s sat opposite from at dinner in fancy restaurants, the man whom her mom described as ‘a total dreamboat back in high school’, although he was three grades above her and she was only here for the summers. But that was then, and this is now.

The first file she finds reads _HNL_ on the top and her heart leaps and sinks all at once, like she’s about to drop on a rollercoaster. So they were right. They were right, she thinks, as she scans the paper briefly - horrifyingly, sickeningly right. She holds the flashlight between her teeth as she flips through the folder, the cold feeling in her chest increasing by the second. But then-

Then there are footsteps outside. In the corridor, heading ever interminably closer. She jumps about a foot in the air and the flashlight clatters to the floor, but she can’t stop. She shoves the folder under her jacket and looks desperately for an escape - the window. The window’s her only option. Frantically she scrambles up onto the sill and slides it open, grateful beyond belief that this is a modern house without heavy sash windows. She lands heavily in the muddy snow on the other side. Then she picks herself up and she _runs_. 

And then runs faster, because there are heavy footsteps crunching after her. 

It’s freezing outside and low-hanging twigs whip her in the face but she can’t stop. She has to make it to her car. She has to make it to her car. She has to make it to her car. She can’t be caught, she can’t let herself be caught, everything will be lost, she’ll be in such deep shit, _Steve_ will be in such deep shit, they might even discover El-

She’s so deep in her thoughts that she misses a root poking out of the snow. She goes flying, landing hard on her stomach with an impact that knocks the breath out of her lungs. As she’s scrambling to stand a hand lands on her arm and she whips around with her gun aimed, her trigger finger ready, to find-

Mike. 

“Mike, Jesus _Christ_ , what- what are you doing here?”

He helps her up. Max is standing behind him, holding his bike, looking maybe a little guilty, eyes on a spot over Nancy’s shoulder, but then her face drops so fast Nancy _knows_. The chase isn’t over. They’re still after her.

She shoves the gun back in her jacket and grabs them both. “Leave the bike,” she hisses, and then she drags them through the woods with her.

“Where are we going?” Mike splutters as he trips along beside her. Max wrenches her wrist away but keeps pace anyway, the danger in the air maybe seeping into her blood. The air is so cold it hurts to breathe.

“Just run!” Nancy can feel blood trickling down her face - she must have cut herself when she fell - and she raises her spare hand to smear it away from her eyes. Running without a flashlight in the January woods is a dangerous game. There could be hidden holes, animal dens out here, or worse. If one of them gets their foot caught in a beartrap or something-

Whoever (whatever?) is behind them is gaining. She can hear the heavy footfalls, heavy but _fast_. The run becomes a sprint. Mike, who’s never been very athletic, wheezing beside her. Max’s panting breaths marked by fear. _Shit._ Shit, if they don’t make it to her car soon she’s gonna have to stop, and fire, and what if it is a person? What if she kills a person? What if it’s Steve’s dad?

What if it’s not?

But then-

“Your car,” Mike gasps. They’ve reached the edge of the woods and there it is, sitting peaceful, undisturbed under the moonlight. She shoves Mike in the backseat and Max follows, and then she hurls herself at the driver’s seat and prays that the ignition hasn’t frozen up. 

“Don’t stall, don’t stall, don’t stall,” she begs under her breath. Something Jonathan had taught her, to run the car for a bit before driving when it’s cold because of the carburetor, and air, and gas, and something, and-

The car rolls along. Achingly slowly she takes her foot off the clutch and it’s fine, oh my god, it’s _fine_ , they’re _moving_ -

“What the hell was that?” Mike whispers. Nancy risks a look in the rearview mirror and finds a shadow in the middle of the road, watching them leave. Something about it makes her throat go dry like sandpaper.

“It- um-”

“What the hell was chasing us?” Max’s voice is strong, pissed-off. Her face, in the rearview, is flushed and angry, the tip of her nose red. “Was it- was it a demodog?”

“No.” That’s one thing she can be sure of. This was bigger, heavier. Maybe- maybe an adult- She feels nauseous at the thought. Her gun would have been useless, if so. Discarded like a kid’s toy. Her hands tremble on the wheel and she clutches it tighter. They’re nearly on Main Street, she realises. Nearly home- Jesus-

“Are you okay?” Mike asks, quietly. “You look-” She meets his eyes in the rearview and he blanches. “Oh my god, Nancy, you’re bleeding-”

She is, isn’t she? It’s dripping into her eyes again. She lifts a hand off the wheel and then everything blurs for a moment, just a moment, but when it comes back into focus they’re already careening off the road. Mike and Max are yelling and why does it feel like she’s underwater, all of a sudden? Her head swims and she’s jolted back into her body only momentarily as the car slams into a fence. And then they’ve stopped moving and she feels ill, really ill, so she fumbles with the door and winds up retching onto the snow.

“Nancy?” Mike sounds scared, she thinks. Really scared. It occurs to her she could have killed him. But so could whoever- whatever- was chasing them, and death by car crash has to be better than death by demogorgon, right? Right?

There are already sirens in the distance. She manages to look up and finds someone standing in the window above, lit with yellow light, glaring down at them because she had the audacity to knock over his fucking fence. Police called, of course. And the station is only two blocks away, so of course they’re already here- 

“Nancy?” Mike is leaning over her now. He reaches up to touch her head but another hand - Max’s - slaps his wrist away. 

“Don’t touch it, you’ll make it worse.”

Nancy has the presence of mind to dig out her gun, and the folder that’s still tucked inside her jacket. She slides them into Mike’s hands - “Hide these somewhere, quick, before the cops get here.”

For once he doesn’t argue. He grabs them from her and rounds the car, hopefully not being so stupid as to just chuck them on the backseat. He’s gone for a moment, and then he’s back, and then all at once everything is flashing red and blue and the goddamn fucking Chief is here. 

He steps up to them and shines the beam of his flashlight right in their faces. It makes Nancy’s already aching head pound. “Alright,” he says, “how much have you had to drink?”

“Nothing!” both Mike and Max say, outraged, too loudly, both because now sound hurts and because it sounds too defensive. It’s true, apart from one glass of champagne several hours ago that had no effect at all. 

“Breathalyze me,” she just says, exhausted. “I’m not drunk.”

Chief Randall frowns down at her. He’s nothing like Hopper, that’s already been made abundantly clear. He’s an _asshole_. Shorter than Hopper, likes to make up for it with an extra dose of spite. Apparently he pulled the Sinclairs over when they were doing forty in a fifty zone, for reasons no one likes to think about. He inspects her for another few moments before tugging out his radio. “I need an ambulance, yeah, intersection at Main Street and Cornwallis, it’s the Wheeler kids and some other girl, car crash. Looks like the Wheeler girl’s hit her head.”

Then he puts the radio away and proceeds to breathalyze her, like an _asshole_. Mike and Max look on in outrage but she lets him do it. She’s got nothing to hide. (She’s got a lot to hide. She hopes Mike found somewhere safe to put the gun and the folder. She has a sneaking suspicion Randall’s in John Harrington’s pocket.)

Their mom arrives with the ambulance. She holds her children tight, right up until the ambulance guy declares that oh, _the concussion wasn’t from the crash, she must have fallen beforehand. There’s dirt in the wound_. That’s when things go to shit.

“Why the hell were you driving with a concussion?!” Karen rages. Nancy winces at the volume. “Do you have any - _any_ \- idea of how dangerous that was. You put Mike at risk, you put Maxine at risk-”

“Max,” Max cuts in, then retreats as they both glare at her. _Sorry_ , she mouths.

“You’re grounded. Do you understand me? You’re grounded. God, you’ll be lucky if you don’t face criminal charges- driving with a _concussion_ -”

“I thought I was fine,” she offers weakly. “I didn’t realise-”

“No, clearly you didn’t.” Her mom’s face is anguished, as well as furious. Blinking away angry tears in the flickering blue lights. Nancy suddenly, desperately, wants a hug. Wants her mom to stroke her hair and soothe her tears like she used to whenever she fought with Ally back in sixth grade. 

“I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t-”

Hopelessly, she knows there’s no way to explain this. Not without revealing everything, _everything_ , and that can’t happen. They all signed their lives away for the third time last summer and there’s been enough hurt, _death_ , already. Her mom can’t ever know.

She just shakes her head and then turns to Mike. “And you- do you have any idea what time it is? I expected you back three hours ago! I was worried! It wasn’t that long since- since Will went missing, and Barbara, and then there was the thing last summer-”

All three of them stare hard at the ground, and she just sighs.

“Mike, you’re grounded too.” He makes an outraged expression but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Maxine- Max- I don’t know anything about your life at home, but it’s a school night. Surely you should be in bed at this hour?”

Max bites her lip and if Nancy didn’t have a thumping headache she’d frown, because there’s definitely something more there. Mike, too, looks shifty - which is to be expected. He’s always been shit at keeping secrets. Which is why it’s a miracle their mom hasn’t found out yet - except it’s not, because she’s the most normal, typical, nice Republican PTA-president cookie-baking mom you could ever have. She’d believe Nancy was sleeping with Mr Clarke before she’d believe in demogorgons, and gates, and Russians under the mall. 

When she moves off to talk to the paramedic again, Nancy moves her gaze, urgent, to Mike. “You hid them, right? The folder and my gun?”

He nods. “No one will find them. Now, are you gonna explain what the fuck is going on?”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When Mike slumps into his seat beside Lucas in second period American History, Lucas pointedly ignores him. He’s late - not just late, but _twenty goddamn minutes late_ \- and Lucas has had to endure the pointed stares of Rhonda opposite who _really_ wants to get into his pants, against whom Mike is (usually) a very handy buffer.

After ten minutes of silence, however, Lucas can’t take it anymore. Mike is staring at a page of his textbook like he’s a zombie in _Day of the Dead_ and he doesn’t even respond when Lucas shoves his shoulder. So he shoves him again, harder. “Mike!” he resorts to hissing. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Finally Mike snaps out of it. He looks at him, blearily. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I said, what the hell is wrong with you? You look like you died in your sleep!”

Mike considers him for a moment, but then looks back down at his desk. There’s definitely something he’s not telling him, Lucas knows this. He also knows he’s had enough of Mike’s _bullshit_ and doesn’t feel like being patient. (Clearly he’s been spending too much time with Erica lately.) 

“Whatever, man. I don’t- I don’t even care anymore. Screw around all you want.” He bends his head back over his textbook, although he doesn’t read a word. He doesn’t care about the Great Depression or the New Deal, and neither does Mike, though he too appears to be concentrating. Lucas’ gaze flickers over to him at least once every thirty seconds, but Mike’s focus is apparently studious. If Lucas didn’t know better he’d think he was actually studying - but he does. Mike’s good results are out of pure smarts, not diligence. Dustin and Mike are definitely the smartest of the party and neither of them ever do any work.

(Will, he thinks, for just a moment. But Will was - is - smart in a different way. Creative, rather than logical. That’s what the party’s lacking, right now. Creativity. A bond. Will, the glue that held them all together when they were close to falling apart.)

After class Dustin approaches them by their lockers, face determined, like he knows they’re both about to escape. Lucas has basketball practice; he doesn’t care what Mike’s up to. Probably off to hang out with Max again. And he acts like that doesn’t hurt, but it does. Sure it does. His girlfriend, possibly-ex or not. Whatever happened to the bro code, dude?

“I gotta talk to you guys about something,” Dustin says, but now neither of them are in the mood.

Mike even rolls his eyes. “What, Dustin?”

“What’s wrong with you, Mike? This is important. It’s about-” he glances around furtively at the busy corridor, at the group of chattering juniors by the lockers opposite, and lowers his voice “-the _Upside Down._ ”

“Christ!” Mike exclaims, as Lucas yelps at the very name. It’s categorically over now. They can’t keep hashing it over, they really can’t. Mike is obsessed but at least that’s understandable, it’s his girlfriend who’s involved, after all, but Dustin? What the hell is Dustin’s problem?

“What is it?” Lucas says, and maybe it comes out too sceptical, because Dustin recoils with offended eyes.

“Don’t you care?” He leans in urgently. “This affects all of us, you know that.”

“So what are you saying? Are you saying the gate is open again?” Lucas presses. Mike is suspiciously silent.

“No, I’m not saying that, but I’ve been doing some research and I think-”

“So it’s nothing new. Nothing new is affecting us, is that what you’re saying?” Lucas slams his locker shut with maybe more force than necessary. “God, both of you- can’t we just be normal teenagers? For once? We’re in high school now, it’s time to leave all that bullshit behind. Sure, it happened, I’m not denying that, but-” He swallows. He thinks of Max, the way she pulled away from him after last summer. Because he _reminded her of it all_. All the weirdness. Because she wanted to get away from it all and yet now her constant companion is Mike Wheeler, commander-in-chief of all the goddamn fucking _weirdness_. She wanted to leave it behind and she failed and so he thinks it’s about time _someone_ did. “But it’s over. And we all need to move on. You’re both missing class all the time and- and for what? Chasing stupid shit from a year ago? If any of us ever wanna get out of this town and _achieve_ something we have to pull it together. _You_ have to pull it together.”

He means what he says; they’re both acting like kids. Kids who are stuck in the past. But the future is calling, and Lucas isn’t gonna ignore it. 

But clearly, neither of them see it that way. Mike looks disgusted and Dustin stares at him, and says, “You sound like Steve. But not good Steve. Steve from two years ago, when he was a complete douchebag. It’s not _stupid shit_ , you know that, and don’t you wanna help El? We gotta help her get her powers back-”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Mike says, sullenly, just as Lucas scoffs, “Isn’t it better for her - hell, for everyone - that she doesn’t have them? We’re all safer in the long run.”

They both stare at him. Mike’s cheeks have gone scarlet with fury while Dustin just looks mortified, but Lucas won’t back down. He’s right. He _knows_ he’s right, so why can’t the others just see that? Why can’t they just see that this isn’t normal? That none of this is normal? That they shouldn’t have to be fighting monsters on the weekend, that being involved in the mysterious death of the local police chief is really fucking awful? That being at risk every second of every day of getting shot in the head by government goons for saying even a single word wrong is scary and horrific and _not normal in any capacity?_

It’s easy to get desensitized, he thinks, but he refuses to be. 

“I can’t believe you,” Mike says quietly.

“After all we’ve been through,” Dustin mutters-

And maybe this is it. Maybe this is where the party ends. Will’s already gone, up north somewhere in a different _timezone_ , for fuck’s sake, and the other three of them have never been further apart. Lucas is the only one thinking logically, thinking about the future, and yeah, that’s always been his role but it’s never been this pronounced until now.

It scares him, just a little, how hostile they are to having a future.

“The party must share a common goal,” Dustin says, a little sadly, rhythmically like he’s quoting something. “That’s what we wrote in our regulations. Only we don’t, not anymore.”

“Dustin-” Lucas starts, but Mike interrupts.

“He’s right. We don’t. Lucas, if you can’t see that this is still relevant- that it’s still _happening-_ ”

Lucas just shakes his head, because it’s not. He would know if it was. He would know, and he’s so goddamn tired of looking over his shoulder. Of going to basketball practice and flinching when the ball gets thrown too hard because it sounds like a gunshot when it hits the wall. He hates it and he doesn’t understand how the others are getting away with it so easily, so seamlessly. 

“I had something important to tell you guys but I guess neither of you care.” Dustin begins to turn away, slowly, like he’s expecting to be followed, but neither of them do. There’s still something hidden in Mike’s expression, something pained, but when he opens his mouth no words come out. Lucas feels the sting of it too but he can’t bring himself to say anything either - because this whole thing is ridiculous. Dustin is grasping at straws and Mike is playing truant for no reason at all and Lucas is tired of it all. He’s so tired.

They share barely any parting words, and Lucas goes to the locker room with a weird, confused feeling clouding his head, a feeling soon knocked out of him by the heavy slap of the basketball captain’s hand on his shoulder. “Sinclair! You ready for the game this weekend?”

Lucas manages a grin. “Sure. I’m not the one you need to worry about - you keeping an eye on Troy?”

Jackson laughs and casts a scornful glance at the corner of the locker room, where Troy is packing his kit. Troy was top of the school in middle school, sure, but high school’s a whole different ball game. He’s pretty unathletic, as it turns out, and by sheer luck wound up on the team as a substitute absolutely no one likes. Gone are the days of _Midnight_ and _Frog Face_. Lucas is top dog now.

“But seriously,” Jackson continues, “we’re gonna smash it this game, right? If we lose then Hawkins will be down at least-”

“We’ll be fine,” Lucas says smoothly. His grin is, as ever, as he’s learning, winning. “Trust in these guns.” He makes a show of kissing his biceps and Jackson whoops.

“You must have the girls flocking, Sinclair!”

Inwardly, his smile drops. It’s not quite so simple as that.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Steve leans against the wall, bored out of his mind, as his father sweeps over the office for the fifth time in twenty minutes. “Evidence,” he’d said, when Steve asked. “I’m looking for evidence. They will definitely have left some.”

So far, nothing, which Steve is frankly over the moon about, because he knows who it was. Of course he does. After last night- the argument- that look in her eyes-

She likes to pretend he doesn’t know her, not anymore, but he does. She knows how she gets something into her head and doesn’t ever let it go, just like he knows he’s always been powerless to stop her. It’s a trait he’s come to admire, these last few years, but equally he wishes she’d listened to him for a change. 

His dad swings around to face him and he shoves all thoughts of Nancy to the furthest depths of his mind, like his dad can read minds. Honestly? He wouldn’t be surprised.

“Did you see anything suspicious last night, at the party?”

He shakes his head. “No, me and Nancy just kinda… mingled the whole time. We didn’t see anything.” He has to repress an expression of disgust at the word ‘mingle,’ one of his mother’s buzzwords. _Go and mingle, Steven_ , when he’s nine and all the other guests’ children are under five. Watching his mother neck her champagne and his father all but ignore him, cocktail party after cocktail party. In some ways it’s nice, knowing his dad’s a villain. His dad’s evil so maybe Steve’s not so worthless after all.

“Hmm.” Is that suspicion in his dad’s eyes? He looks down and shuffles his feet. He’s never been a very good liar. “Listen, I need you to go to the Jones Motel off the interstate and pick up some laundry that needs dry-cleaning.”

Steve’s stomach turns. He knows what that means. It means what he’s always suspected but is now placed before him in black-and-white, as he fulfils the role his father’s PAs always fulfilled before him. But he nods, and turns away from the study, and meets his mother on the way out the door. 

“Steven, can you pick up some olives from the store? We’re out and I can’t make a martini without them,” she says. She’s shorter than his dad but about Steve’s height; her hair is dark blonde and coiled in intricate fashionable ringlets, a hairstyle that will surely come apart when she’s had more than a couple martinis, as he knows she will. 

“Sure,” he says dully. For a moment - just a moment - he wonders if this is worth it. Pandering to their whims. Supporting his mother’s alcoholism and his father’s cheating womanising. His mom’s liver may fail before he succeeds in taking his dad down, and the thought makes his heart stutter in his chest. She’s a nightmare, sure, but she’s his _mom._ That has to count for something, right?

But on his way to the motel, he stops by the grocery store and buys a jar of olives. They take shotgun like a fellow passenger. 

At the motel he’s expecting the room to be empty. He turns the key his father gave him in the lock and ducks into the dim, sleazy red room. The laundry, as he was told, is hung up neatly on the wardrobe; a dark double-breasted suit, somewhat creased, that Steve recognises from last night’s party. He wrinkles his nose, and then jumps about a foot in the air when a hand lands on his shoulder and turns him roughly around.

“Who the fuck are you?” 

It’s a woman, blonde, at least half a foot shorter than him, but with disconcerting strength in her grip. She’s dressed only in a discolored towel. 

“I’m Steve, Steve Harrington.”

Her lips part in an ‘O’ of recognition. “Oh, okay. Um- how is John?”

Great. Just great. Another woman he’s fucked and left in the lurch. Crudely, Steve hopes he used a goddamn condom. “He’s fine. He just sent me to get his suit.” The whole thing strikes him as ridiculously protracted. His dad clearly arrived in the suit, bringing other clothes with him, fucked this woman (when? after the party? did he seriously leave the party and go have sex in a sleazy motel off the interstate?), changed, and left the suit here, because coming home with a suit carrier would be too suspicious. Jesus fucking Christ. 

He slides the suit into the suit carrier his dad gave him, as the woman watches with her arms crossed over her chest. She can’t be older than thirty. He gives her an awkward smile and runs a hand through his hair before going to the door. “Well, uh, see ya.”

“Can you tell him to call?”

He winces. “Sure. Uh, have a nice day?”

When he’s closed the door behind him he takes in a deep breath of fresh snow. The field opposite the motel is white and bleak, with the cars on the interstate gleaming on the horizon. Then he goes to his car and checks the pockets of the suit, like always. They’re disappointingly empty. And again he thinks, as he slumps over the steering wheel in defeat, Nancy might have really fucked this one up. Because now his dad will be more careful. Now he’ll double-lock the study and install a burglar alarm and never leave evidence in the pockets of his suits.

He’s about to drive off but then he stops, sighs, gets out of the car. Rounds it to the trunk and pops it to look at that beautiful thing, his nail bat. God, he’d missed it those days under the mall. It sure would have been useful. Now he keeps it with him even more compulsively. He strokes the grip with his jaw clenched, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder. He’s felt uneasy since the moment he discovered just exactly what his dad was up to in that nice classy office of his, since the moment he saw _US Department of Energy_ inscribed on the top of one of his files. He’s hated his dad for a while but now he has a reason, other than Steve just being a ‘whiny little bitch.’ It’s refreshing but it makes his skin crawl.

On the way to the dry cleaner’s he drives past the video store, and cranes his neck to get a glimpse of Robin, but it’s Keith manning the counter today. Robin’s not there.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“So, are you gonna tell me what happened?”

Joyce’s voice is gentle but there’s a probing edge to it. She’s sitting across from El, every so often casting glances around the diner. It’s all but empty, but she’s still on shift. El doesn’t look at her. Studies the sticky lacquered table and deliberately avoids looking at Joyce’s faint, red-tinted reflection in it. 

“El?” She prods, though not unkindly, and El moves her gaze from the table to the window. It’s nearly dark outside, a fresh flurry of snow drifting past and flickering bright in the orange glare of the streetlamp. She’s reminded of a painting that Jonathan’s got a postcard of pasted up on his wall - _Nighthawks_ , she thinks. She feels the weariness of that server, the loneliness of those customers despite their being together hanging in the air, though Joyce is sitting right across from her and she’s been told oh so many times _you’re not alone, sweetheart._ She remembers asking Jonathan about the painting. It was so cold and still on his wall beside the photograph of Nancy laughing and the red and blue poster of the Talking Heads. He’d shrugged, said _I think it’s peaceful_. And, _it’s New York, though I saw it in Chicago. It reminds me of where I wanna be, if I can._ The corners of his mouth had turned down at this last bit and El had frowned - and then he’d mentioned who painted it, offhand, like it wouldn’t gut her, and then it did.

 _Edward Hopper._ Her dad follows her everywhere. She can’t get him out of her head.

A sudden hand on her arm makes her jump, and she looks round into Joyce’s wide, dark eyes, so full of concern, so not blue. “You can talk to me, you know that, right? You’re a part of this family too. You don’t have to shut yourself out like this.”

She swallows past a sudden lump in her throat. Her fries are cooling on the plate between them, but she doesn’t feel like eating them. She doubts Joyce will touch them either. “Am I?” she whispers, finally. Resolutely ignores the sting in her eyes.

“Are you... Oh, sweetie, of course you’re a part of this family.” Joyce reaches over and takes her hands, rubs circles on her skin with her thumb. “Of course you are. Don’t ever question that.”

“But I’m not, though. I’m not-” She bites her lip. “I’m not _normal._ At school- they all know. It’s obvious, like-” On impulse she tears her hands out of Joyce’s and drags her sleeve up, exposing the dark stain of her name, forever etched into her skin. _011_. She has to wear long sleeves all the time and still she feels like everyone is staring at it, like it’s burning through her clothes. “Like I’m grown in a lab. And I am.”

She feels the air change. Joyce sharpens and when El risks a glance she sees that her eyes are like daggers. “Is that what they said? Who? I swear to god-”

“No, please don’t- don’t do anything. It’s okay, really. It’s fine.”

Joyce is shaking her head. “I’m not letting them treat you like that- is that what happened to your top? These… bullies?” She indicates the undeniable gravy stain that El’s been trying to cover up with her coat. Her lunch, splattered all over her from when Darren stuck his foot out and sent her flying. Joyce was so happy when she found out that _Oh, your high school does canteen lunch three times a week!_ , her voice economically bright. It’s cheaper than making them packed lunches every day, and it means they don’t have to eat a big dinner at home. It’s a new adjustment, a new hardship, a different one. El’s never had to feel guilty about money before. So what she’d thought, when she’d been launched through the air and landed with her chest in her tray covered in stew and mashed potato, her first thought, had been that she’d just wasted however many of Joyce’s few dollars. She wasn’t thinking about the humiliation, or how gross the food felt soaking wet through her clothes. She was thinking about money when she aimed her gaze at him and strained so hard she got a nosebleed that bled and bled and wouldn’t stop until they sent her home for the rest of the day. 

“No, I just fell in the cafeteria.” She avoids Joyce’s eyes.

“Sweetie, why don’t you want me to help? They can’t treat you like this, I’m not gonna let them-”

“Stop. Just stop!” Her voice is louder than she intends and a year ago it would have shattered her coke glass but now it just causes the sole other customer to look around curiously. “Stop,” she says, lower, pleadingly. “Don’t you see- you can’t go out of your way for me like that. You’re already doing so much for me and I- I don’t deserve it.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath and Joyce grabs for her hand again, tight so she can’t escape this time. “Listen to me. You’re gonna stop thinking like that right now, because you do deserve it. You’re a part of this family and we look out for each other, right? Like how you look out for Will, and he looks out for you.”

“But I can’t look out for him anymore,” she says miserably. “I can’t do anything.”

“Your powers are not who you are, and I promise you you’re not worthless without them. Sometimes we all need saving. Like how we all saved Will, and how you saved Dustin from the Russians, and how I saved-” Joyce breaks off and closes her eyes. Her grip on El’s hand loosens, just slightly, and she doesn’t have to wonder what Joyce was going to say. She feels faintly ill. “It’s not a question of _deserving_ , anyway.”

“But I’m not like you, or Will, or Jonathan. You know that- I’m not normal.”

“ _Normal?_ El, we’re not normal. Trust me. We- we’re not normal.”

Joyce looks at her for a long, silent moment. El can read a debate in her eyes, a question - _how much should I tell her?_ It doesn’t annoy her as much as maybe it should. She doesn’t mind being treated like a kid, not like Will and Mike do. She feels like a kid. She is one.

Joyce reaches into her pocket and takes out the empty orange bottle from yesterday morning. She slides it into El’s hand and gives her a smile that’s more than a little wobbly. “Do you know why I take these?”

El frowns, looks at the label. _Diazepam. Horowitz,_ Joyce’s new name, new and old, _their_ new name, because she said she didn’t want to be tied to Will’s dad anymore and they attract less attention as four Horowitzes than the Byers and a Hopper. A doctor and a number and a date. It doesn’t mean much to her. “They make you calmer,” she says, because that’s what Will said when she asked.

“That’s right. Because sometimes I think too much, and I can’t stop, and sometimes I have panic attacks. You remember what those are, right?” El nods. She’s had them too, a few times. At the time she’d wondered at how matter-of-fact, calm Joyce was about it. Now she knows why. “I didn’t used to take the meds, before-” Joyce swallows visibly. “But I should have done. This thing- it’s followed me all my life. From when I was your age.”

The idea scares her, just a little. That something now might never go away. That her powerlessness might remain, eternal; that her freak status will follow her forever. 

“When I was seventeen, I spent two weeks in a psych ward.” Joyce’s voice is quiet, solemn but not grave. Matter-of-fact. “I- well, I needed it, but from that moment on I was ‘crazy’in the eyes of the town. People have been calling me it for years. There have been times I thought I was - and I’m not, but I’m certainly not normal. Jonathan’s been called a ‘freak’ at school all his life just because he prefers his own company to other people’s. And Will- well. You know what happened to Will. He’s different because of it. We all are.” 

El stares at her for a moment. Oh. _Oh._ And then she feels ashamed and defensive in equal measure, because what do they know about what she’s been through? What do they know about white corridors and a shaved head and the feeling of salt water crusting on her skin? What do they know-

But there’s plenty she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about Christmas lights and the fragile creeping sense that you’re losing your mind. She doesn’t know about the scar on Joyce’s wrist that no one ever talks about and she doesn’t know about the way they all flinch when a man raises his voice. She doesn’t know about the rotting blue light of the upside down. She’s never been, not in the way Will has. 

She should say something in response, something real, something that will make Joyce stop looking at her with eyes like broken glass, but instead she says, “I keep thinking about Dad.”

The glass shatters further. Joyce breathes in again, tightly, and squeezes El’s hand. “In- in what way?”

“I just- I thought I saw him, the other day. On the street. I keep-” She bites her lip. Joyce’s cheeks have lost all color and she definitely regrets bringing this up. “I keep thinking about him.”

“Me too, sweetie,” Joyce says, after a faint pause. “I- me too.” She looks at her for a long, quiet moment. “I was going through his old boxes, the other day, and I- I found some old stuff.”

She produces her wallet - short and brown, a man’s wallet - and slides a small photograph, a polaroid, into El’s hand. She looks at it and frowns. It’s of a girl and a boy, the girl all but in the guy’s lap, the pair of them sitting on a wooden floor in the foreground of a homely brown hallway. The girl is smiling at the camera, lips painted a shade of red El’s never seen anywhere except on TV, her hair black and short and styled, a cigarette in her raised hand. The boy is tall, sandy blond, looking down at the girl with naked adoration. 

The girl is Joyce. The boy is-

“Hopper,” Joyce says, a little sadly. “That’s Hopper, and that’s me with him. I think- God, I can’t remember who took it now. Maybe Karen. It was maybe August ‘65…”

“You-” El isn’t sure what she wants to say. The words are sticking in her throat.

“We went to high school together, yeah. He and his dad moved to Hawkins for freshman year - we were the same age as you are now, when we met. He was- God, he was so stupid.” But she’s laughing, crying and laughing, and El reaches for her hand again. Joyce lets her take it. “We were- we were close, for a while. But then he went to Vietnam and I- well.” The smile has disappeared and she looks like she wants to cry again, cry for real, not laughing-with-tears. El touches the polaroid again and Joyce squeezes her hand. “You can keep it, you know. If you want.”

Now El wants to cry, too. She whispers, “Thank you,” and tucks it into the pocket of her jeans, where she knows it will be safe. She’ll take it out later, and stare at it, and wonder at the fact that Joyce and Hopper were ever in high school, were ever her age. It seems impossible. They’re both so strong- world-weary-

Or _was_ , in Hopper’s case. Her chest tightens and she digs her nails into the palm of her free hand. Even after all this time it makes her want to crawl under the covers of her bed and never get up again. But having this, she thinks, this little photo - it won’t allow her to forget him. And she’s glad of that. Forgetting is her biggest fear: forgetting Hop, forgetting Mike, left back in Hawkins, forgetting Max and Dustin and Lucas…

“Thank you,” she says again, quietly. 

Joyce gives her another heartbreaking smile. “Of course.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“This is good stuff, man.”

“Only the best.” Tony smirks at Ryan’s compliment, and Will flushes and has to look away. He surveys the far off horizon, Lake Superior glinting in the distance under the setting sun, which casts long shadows across the sports pitch. They’re sprawled on the bleachers, smoking the ‘good stuff.’ Tony is lying on the step below them, eyes closed, enjoying the sun, stretched out like a cat. 

“Are you guys sure we won’t get caught?” Will asks, as he takes another drag of his blunt. He’s come to like the sensation. He’s already feeling spacy, chilled out. All the cliches. 

“Relax. It’s nearly dark. No one ever comes out here this late.”

“You’re very tightly wound,” Tony says, absently. “Do you have issues with authority?”

“Don’t psychanalyse him,” Ryan says, as Tony bulldozes on through, “Dad issues, I bet.”

In any other state coming from any other mouth that would cause him to freeze up, to go quiet and sullen, to walk away as fast as his legs would carry him - but he’s high, and it’s Tony, so he just frowns lazily. Logically, he knows it should upset him. He’s also tired of being upset. “How did you know?”

“Man, you reek of it. But so do I, so. Maybe that’s how I can tell. What’s your story, then?”

He finds the words just tripping off his tongue as he watches the darkening sky. “He was an asshole... I mean- yeah. He was. He used to hurt my mom, sometimes. My brother too. And then my mom finally divorced him when I was eight.”

“Shit, Horowitz,” Ryan says, as Tony blows a smoke ring. “That’s why your sister’s so weird?”

“She’s not weird,” he argues, but that’s not gonna get him anywhere because… well… she is weird. Very weird. “She’s adopted. It’s a long story, but she’s- yeah. I guess we’re all a little weird, me and her and my brother and my mom. The town seems to think so, at least.”

“This fucking town, man.” Ryan is shaking his head. “Just ignore them.”

“Oh, we’re used to it. Back home it was worse. The Satanic Panic was just kicking off as we left.” It’s true; it was. He’d been treated with suspicion ever since his resurrection as _zombie boy_ , but it got immeasurably worse after Hopper and the mall and the unexplained deaths of over thirty Hawkins residents. His mom, out of a job, had been unable to find another one, and they’d only sold the house through a stroke of blind luck. No one wanted anything to do with the cursed Byers family - and still, even here, some people don’t.

“‘The Satanic Panic.’ Jesus. I’ll give ‘em something to panic about.”

Ryan sits up. “What do you mean?”

Tony, still lying down, shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m just- I’m so tired of it all. You know the white lady next-door to us won’t talk to my mom because she’s Latina, and is therefore ‘in contact with the devil’?”

“They wouldn’t know the devil if it was standing right in front of them,” Will says quietly, to no one in particular. Then he focuses and realises that they’re both staring at him, smoke gently rising from their blunts. Because sure, he’s told them about his family, now. But he hasn’t told them about the real shit. The stuff that still keeps them all awake at night, keeps them looking over their shoulders when there’s nothing there.

Ryan glances between them, then shrugs. “Anyway, I gotta go.”

Will and Tony pass him their goodbyes but they remain sitting there. Will doesn’t want to leave, not just yet. Tony moves up to sit beside him. He’s smiling.

Will feels the weight of Ryan’s absence like a stone. He knows he’s probably freaked them out. He doesn’t know how he can explain. “I just- I faced a lot of shit in our old town. Some bad stuff happened. And it wasn’t El they picked on, it was me, like when they called me zombie boy, like when-” He falls silent. This isn’t something he’s allowed to talk about, but there’s no prompting in Tony’s eyes. “I’m sorry, this isn’t-”

“It’s okay,” Tony says - insists. Will swallows. Tony is just looking at him, close, with those dark eyes and soft lips-

Leaning in is all too easy. Letting Tony kiss him is even easier. It’s warm and strangely wet, not like Will expected, but good too. Good enough that just for a moment he can forget how weird this is, how weird all this is, how _wrong_ people think this is-

Then Tony pulls away. He runs a hand through his hair and for the first time he looks unsure. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he says, quietly.

“Why not?” Will feels strangely desperate. 

“Because-” Tony averts his eyes, voice dropping to a whisper. “I shouldn’t.”

He gets up, slings his bag over his shoulder. Will’s chest feels tight and something about this- something about this is bringing him back to _It’s not my fault you don’t like girls_ , to rain and Mike’s garage and the feeling of being left behind. “Wait-” he says, standing up too, but Tony is leaving.

“I’m- sorry, Will. Sorry.” 

Will is left alone on the bleachers in the nearing dark, just like always. Just like last time.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END CREDITS: [smalltown boy](https://open.spotify.com/track/3Ovk5FUK5YUnHX5aJXHcqW?si=REMkG5XdSVaWIhntCGLTrQ) by bronski beat 
> 
> let me know your thoughts/theories/questions in the comments, and come talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/joycefinkels) or [tumblr](https://palmviolet.tumblr.com). <3


	2. A Town Called Malice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dustin and Robin investigate the old Lab and find more than they bargained for. Joyce confronts a life-changing revelation, while Will discovers something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> extra warning for medical malpractice, homophobia, racism, + anti-semitism, and implied/referenced child abuse in this chapter.

“Because I still cry secretly

I still delve in dreams.”

– Odysseus Elytis, trans. Athan Anagnostopoulos, _Maria Nephele: A Poem In Two Voices_

“Enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.”

– Ilya Kaminsky, _we lived happily during the war_ (2013)

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

** Friday, January 17th, 1986 **

Somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota

Joyce has nightmares often. Too often to count, in fact. The medication prevented her panic attacks after the fact but the nightmares remained, always, vivid and terrifying. Bob dying, Hopper dying, both of them reaching out for her and forever out of her reach, hands never managing to connect, Bob snatched away and Hopper falling into the void. Will too, sometimes, though those dreams seem to have faded a little now they’re out of Hawkins. Out of danger. But Bob and Hopper can never be out of danger ever again: both of them are frozen in her memory in the moment of chaos, of death. 

This time she wakes with Hopper’s name on her lips.

Will is standing over her. His hand is on her arm and there’s weak early morning light filtering through the curtains, casting everything in a pallid glow, and for a second she forgets where she is and she thinks of that ‘83 morning, _We have to go see Will_ , that plastic corpse full of fluff like the cheap insulation in the walls of her house. 

She brushes these memories off like cobwebs and blinks at him. “Hey, baby. You okay?”

He nods. “You- you were calling out. In your sleep. Are you okay? Was it- was it a nightmare?”

“It-” What did she say? The details of the dream are already dissolving from her mind and she hopes- Well. She doesn’t want to traumatise her sons any further. “I’m fine. It was just a dream.” She sits up further and winces. She’s on the couch, she realises - she must have been here all night, long after the kids went to bed. Her neck is painfully stiff. “God, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on the couch. Guess I was tired. Are you-” She looks at him closer. He looks tired too. “What are you doing up so early?”

He looks at his feet. “I- um- couldn’t sleep. I woke up at, like, five, and since then…”

She bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from tugging him down to sit beside her and _demanding_ he tell her what’s wrong. She knows he wouldn’t appreciate it. “Alright, well, I’ll make you some breakfast? I could fry up some bacon.”

His face splits into a smile and she almost wilts with relief. She doesn’t usually make breakfast - that’s Jonathan - but this morning she has time. And not only that, really. It’s that there’s still a cold, nervous silence between her and her eldest child, who is still a child, after all, no matter how much they all act otherwise. She has to try and lighten his load.

The thought makes her heart sink. She has to see the doctor today, to try and get more of the meds Jonathan didn’t pick up. She was too harsh on him, she knows that. But everything is slipping out of her control.

She gets to her feet and is halfway to the kitchen before Will speaks in a soft, trembling voice, and she has to suppress the usual flare of panic at his tone. “Mom?” he asks, his voice small.

She turns to him. “Yes, baby? What is it?”

He’s fidgeting with his hands, something heavy and loaded in his face. “I need to tell you something,” he says- before the phone rings and her stomach sinks further. It’s an ingrained reaction now, after all this time. The tensing of her spine, the tightening of her chest. Pupils dilating with the beginnings of adrenaline. She shares a glance with Will, who’s frozen, interrupted, before answering it.

“Hello?”

“Joyce?” 

She recognises that hissed voice. It takes her right back to July. “Murray? What is it?”

“Joyce, this is gonna sound crazy, but I need you to bear with me, alright? You may wanna sit down.”

“Sit down? What-”

“Just do it.” She ignores him entirely. “It’s about last summer.”

She feels cold. “I don’t-”

“Would you just let me finish? Please? If you’d returned my calls before maybe you’d know what was going on-”

This is true. She has been ignoring him. But for a reason, because he’s _Murray goddamn Bauman_ , faux-journalist, conspiracy-theorist extraordinaire. Troubles follow him, and she only just escaped her own. 

“I’ve been looking for our friend.”

 _Our friend?_ What does that _mean_? Who’s their friend? ‘Their’, because it’s plural, collective, shared. And the only person they have - had - in common died two miles beneath Starcourt Mall six months ago. He’s talking in code, _classic Murray_ , because _who knows who might be listening_ , and sure that’s an admirable sentiment but she’s getting really fucking annoyed. 

“ _Our friend_ , Joyce. We- uh- thought he was moving away, right? But he’s only on vacation.”

“What? I- I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her mind is still groggy, clouded with sleep, and she can’t bring herself to unwind the tangled meanings in his words. Her heart is thudding in her chest and she doesn’t even want to, really. She can’t face whatever this is. (She was right, she thinks - Murray always brings trouble.) 

“Joyce, c’mon, please, just listen to me, think about what I’m saying- I know this is hard-”

“No, you don’t know!” she snaps. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Will take a step back. “You don’t know how hard this is, any of it. You don’t know how hard it’s been to even get this far and now you’re calling all the time, talking about _last summer_ like it isn’t over, like- like none of us are allowed to move on-”

“Joyce-”

She hangs up. 

“Mom?” Will is staring at her like Jonathan does some of the time (all of the time), like she’s about to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. “Are you okay?”

She takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m fine, baby. Go and wake up the others, okay? I’ll make breakfast.”

He disappears back down the corridor after another cautious look and mindlessly, without thought, she warms oil in a pan and cracks eggs into it, folding them into the creamy scramble that makes up most of their breakfasts, since it’s easy and eggs are cheap. The phone is ringing again but she ignores it, thinks about leaving it off the hook. Murray can go fuck himself. 

She doesn’t start work until lunchtime today - lunchtime til late she’s working, which is usually a good shift except it’s a Friday so half the customers after nine will be drunk - so when the kids have eaten and gone to school she gets in her car and drives to the doctor’s for an appointment her insurance probably won’t pay for. When she’s parked up she takes a moment to breathe, bowing her head over the steering wheel. She really needs these meds. She’s been having nightmares, waking up nauseous and hunching by the toilet to no effect, no relief, only shaking hands and blurring at the edge of her vision. It’s withdrawal, she knows. She also knows that giving it a name won’t get her anywhere.

Maybe if she could ride it out. Maybe if she could ride out the withdrawal and cut the meds out of her life, then-

Then she’d have a bit more money, and Jonathan wouldn’t look at her like _that_ , and-

And nothing, because that’s all a pipe dream and she does need them, however much she rues it. Something broke in her that night in the mall and all the miles and miles between her and Hawkins still can’t fix it. 

She gets out of her car and in the waiting room she stares straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room. She doesn’t recognise any of them, thank god. No one knows what she’s here for but she can feel the stigma of it anyway, the very thing that got her labelled _crazy_ back in Hawkins, now known not-so-affectionately as Hell. 

Dr. Anton doesn’t look like how you think a doctor should look. He’s an average height but built like a brick wall, blond, pale with the raspy voice of a smoker that she recognises in herself. When she enters the room he stands up, politely, and he towers several inches above her head. “Ms. Horowitz, hi.”

She tries pointedly not to think about who his stature reminds her of, and fails just a little bit. When she sits down she folds her hands together in her lap and tries to stop her leg jigging up and down, up and down, and she fails at that too. “I- um- I tried to renew my prescription,” she says, when he looks at her expectantly. “The pharmacist wouldn’t let me.”

“Oh, really?” His words are surprised but his tone isn’t. “Well, I think perhaps we should review your symptoms anyway. After all, there’s no sense in keeping you on a high dose unnecessarily. Have you experienced any side effects?”

“I’ve been having headaches,” she says slowly, then cuts herself off, “-but that’s probably not related. It’s not like I never used to get them.”

“Hmm, okay. No difficulty concentrating? Drowsiness?”

“...Well, maybe. I don’t know, I-” Yeah, maybe he’s right, if the number of times Mickey has yelled at her for standing by the counter and staring into space are anything to go by. And the number of times she’s been so tired it’s taken all her effort just to make dinner for the kids and crawl into bed afterwards. “Yeah.”

“And do you think they’re helping? Are the side effects, such as they are, worth it?”

She considers the question. Have they been helping? Her immediate response is _yes_ , because now she only wakes in a cold sweat once a week and she throws up every so often, rather than every other day, but then she hesitates. She’s been too tired for nightmares, to tell the truth, and the reason her thoughts don’t spiral into panic attacks is because she can’t hold a sustained thought for longer than thirty seconds. Is it worth it? She doesn’t want this for herself, not for the rest of her life. Equally she doesn’t want the anxiety either.

“I’m not sure,” she admits. He leans over his desk and steeples his fingers under his chin, an act that looks absurd on such a burly man. He stays silent and she feels pressed to continue. “I hadn’t even noticed the side effects, not really, because- well- I’m used to feeling like shit.” Her voice is quiet. She doesn’t look at him, and studies her hands. “It’s just a different kind of shit. I don’t know- I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

He has that way that doctors have, of considering her like she’s a child and he’s a teacher who knows infinitely more than she can ever possibly grasp. He folds his fingers together and rests his chin on them. “Okay, well, if there’s even the slightest chance that being on the medication is not to your advantage then you shouldn’t be taking it, so why don’t you give it a rest for a few weeks and then we’ll revisit the issue?”

Her mouth is dry. “You- you’re not gonna prescribe me any more? You’re not gonna prescribe me _anything?”_

Somewhere along the line she got used to the idea that she needs it. That she can’t function without it. That maybe she is - on some level - a little bit _crazy_. Of course, that’s not the word. But it’s hard to think of it as anything else when it’s the word that’s been levelled at her for years and years and years, since she was just a teenager in high school.

He shakes his head. “See how you get on. And if you experience any symptoms of withdrawal that you can’t manage on your own, don’t hesitate to call me. Just give the receptionist your name and she’ll put you straight through, okay?”

She frowns at him, but the interview is clearly over. She stands up and awkwardly shakes his proffered hand. Her fingers are twitching for a smoke, though she had one just twenty minutes before, and with a jolt she realises quite how yellow they are as he lets go of her hand. She really should cut back.

She’s still got two hours until her shift starts, so she goes home. When she opens the door the phone is already ringing. Murray, again, there’s no doubt in her mind. She drops her keys in the bowl by the door and marches over to answer it, coat still on, burning with fury. Can’t he just leave them _alone-_

“Murray, I mean it, fuck off!” she shouts, a little louder than necessary, but thankfully no one’s home. She goes to lower the phone-

But it’s not Murray’s voice shouting in her ear, begging her not to hang up. It’s not that bitter tone, the tone that makes her cringe even now because it reminds her of that summer, of everything that went wrong. It’s a voice that reminds her of another time, an earlier time, when it was Bob she lost, not Hopper. 

“Joyce, I need you to stay on the line, please.” 

It’s Sam Owens.

She freezes, heart choking her in her throat, and stays on the line.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Why did you break up with Lucas?”

Max stops in her tracks and turns to stare at him, red ponytail swinging. The woods around them are quiet and calm, so he figured now was as good a time as any to ask. (He might have been wrong.) “Excuse me?”

“I’m just asking. It kinda came out of nowhere.” He shivers and digs his hands deeper into his pockets. His breath comes out in icy clouds. It’s cold today, colder than it was yesterday - or else yesterday he just didn’t notice, given that he spent the whole time inside. His mom drove him to school and his mom drove him home again, and he didn’t dare to skip. But today is different. And if nothing else, he needs to get his bike from where they dropped it down near Steve’s. Near the Byers’. 

“So what if it did?” There’s a challenge in Max’s eyes. “It’s none of your business.”

“Um, yes it is. You’re both my friends and Lucas is acting really weird, now, so-”

“You think our break-up four months ago is the reason he stopped speaking to you yesterday.” Her voice is flat, and yeah, when you say it like that it sounds ridiculous. But he’s _right._ Lucas has changed. They used to be so close- and yeah, they would argue about stuff, but they still wanted the same things. _The party must share a common goal._ Lucas doesn’t want to be a part of the party anymore, and Mike can’t square that with anything except it being Max’s fault.

She turns around and keeps walking, and he has to hurry to keep up with her, but then she starts talking too. “He didn’t get it,” she says. “I mean, he tried. Don’t get me wrong, he tried really hard. But Billy dying- I mean, _I_ didn’t get it. I didn’t get why I felt so weird about the whole thing. I didn’t love him. He was an asshole. And then I felt bad for not loving him, and he died so awfully and I _watched_ and I felt sad but not sad enough and that made me sadder-” She breaks off. Her voice has gone suspiciously wobbly and he’s not sure what he’ll do if she starts crying. She probably wouldn’t accept a hug. “I didn’t get it, and I still don’t get it, and Lucas gets it even less and he just- it’s easier, to just be friends for now.”

Mike feels like he understands, as much as he can. After what happened in July - dumping him aside - El had pulled back completely. He hadn’t even wanted to approach the issue, had been too scared to. She was so blank and empty. It was only when she was leaving that they’d tentatively come together again, and it’s still different. Still weird. (How could it not be?)

“For now?” he asks, with a raised eyebrow.

She looks at him sideways, then quickly looks away. “Did he put you up to this?”

“What? No-”

“Because if he did you can shove your questions up your ass, Wheeler, and go right back to Algebra II with that cowardly little shit-”

“Jesus Christ, he didn’t! I can’t just ask? You just said yourself we’re friends. A friend can’t be interested?”

She huffs. “I guess. I just never figured you would be. This is more of a functional relationship, isn’t it? Skip class together, smoke together, because we’re the only two of our friends who don’t care about school anymore? I mean, you never wanted me in the party anyway, so…”

“Seriously?” He stops walking, forcing her to stop too. “That was, like, two years ago. I mean, _I_ thought we were friends, but…”

She looks at him for a long moment, then looks away, biting her lip. His stomach sinks. Oh. Maybe they aren’t friends. Maybe this is functional. “Mike…”

He scoffs. “I should’ve known when you turned El against me.”

“Whoa, what?! I did not _turn her against you_ , she’s her own person, as you keep forgetting- God, you keep doing that, first it’s Lucas, then El- You know they can think for themselves, right?” There’s an angry flush on her cheeks. “You can be so selfish, Wheeler.”

He scowls, defensiveness rising up inside him. He was _looking out_ for El, just like he’s looking out for Lucas now, surely that’s the opposite of selfish- “Fuck you, I’m not selfish.”

She just laughs. It rankles. “Mike Wheeler, everyone: nerd, dungeon master, and _asshole._ ”

He clenches his jaw and quickens his pace to walk past her. He expects her to stop, to walk away. There’s no sense in her coming with him, now, is there? Since apparently they’re not friends and she thinks he’s an asshole. But he can still hear her footsteps, crunching on the snowy ground behind him. They’re nearly at the place where he dropped his bike, or so he thinks. It’s hard to tell when it was so dark that night. 

(Running through the woods- something _chasing_ them- Nancy’s panic, the blood on her face- the _car-_

He still doesn’t have all the answers. Nancy has been silent, uncommunicative. Yesterday she stayed off school, recovering apparently, and her door was locked the whole evening. Whatever she’s mixed up in, she’s not sharing. It makes him pissed off more than it makes him scared.)

“Why are you still here, if you hate me so much?” he says finally, rounding on Max. She stops short and looks faintly embarrassed.

“I don’t hate you,” she says. Her voice is small. She scuffs her shoe in the dirt and looks away from him- but then she freezes. “What is that?”

Despite himself, he turns to look. In the distance to the right of them there’s an outcropping of rock, something he’s never seen before despite having spent hours in these woods with the party when Will still lived around here. He _knows_ these woods, and that didn’t used to be here. He’s sure of it. 

He’s sure of it.

He steps closer, cautious now, though he doesn’t know why. It was probably always there, he reasons, they just- they just never came this way before- Or maybe it’s just something that happens, plates shifting and all that, he doesn’t know much about geology-

“Has that- has that always been there?” Max’s voice is thin, nervous. He doesn’t answer her, just moves closer, and closer, until he rounds the back of it and is staring down into a dark, black cave, gaping like a mouth. “Holy shit,” she whispers and he jumps. She’s standing close to him, trembling with nervous energy, but he doesn’t look around. He can’t. He’s trapped, fixated by this- this black spot, like a black hole, sucking in all the light around it, all the world-

It’s just a cave. But it doesn’t look like a cave. Somehow it looks deeper- four dimensional, instead of three, if that’s a thing- but also flat, because he can’t see anything in it, nothing, no depth of perspective. It’s like a black hole has opened up in the woods. A tear in reality, exposing the sheer weight of _nothing_ behind it.

Where did this come from? Where did it- How- This is impossible-

“Mike!” He becomes aware that Max is shaking his shoulder, hard. He jolts and tears his eyes away from the cave, and looks around at her. Her eyes are wide, her face pale. Visibly scared. “Let’s go. I don’t like this.”

“It’s just a cave,” he tries to say, but the words are sticking in his throat. He doesn’t know why, because it is just a cave. Right?

They don’t talk after that. They find his bike a few hundred yards away, far enough that the cave disappears among the trees. Mike finds himself constantly looking back at it, trying to find it over his shoulder. There’s something _weird_ there, he knows it. Something _wrong._

Then they walk his bike back to the road, and as she climbs on the back she says, “I didn’t mean it. You are my friend.” 

But her voice is so empty, so lacklustre, so pallid and frightened still that the words feel weak. “Me too,” he says, but he knows that neither of them are really thinking about what they’re saying. Their minds are on that gaping maw of _nothing_ in the woods.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

Jonathan drives them to school again, but it’s not out of the kindness of his heart. He has class this morning, instead of a free period, so no shift at the movie theatre until the afternoon. Will stares out the window the whole way, silent. El and Jonathan are talking sporadically in the front but he barely hears them. In his head he’s just replaying the previous evening, over and over and over. Tony’s soft lips, then _I shouldn’t have done that._ He thought about pretending to be sick, anything to get out of today’s inevitable confrontation, but his mom was acting weird this morning and he didn’t want to freak her out any further. So he’s stuck here in Jonathan’s car, on his way to face his doom.

God, what if Tony _tells_ people? What if everyone _knows?_ He’s taken so many pains to keep it secret- and now- 

(He’s thinking about Mike, too. About _it’s not my fault you don’t like girls._ It still hurts, somehow even more right now, because if Mike- Mike who’s known him since kindergarten- then what hope in hell does he have with people who’ve known him four months?)

All too soon they’re pulling into the parking lot and he’s slow to get out of the car. “You okay?” Jonathan asks. There’s a frown on his face. And Will wants to tell him, really he does. Really. And two years ago, Will probably would have done. Back when Jonathan was a lonely freak too. But now he’s different, and Will is different, and Will heard him and their mom arguing the other night so he’s got enough to worry about, clearly, they both do, so this is something Will is gonna deal with on his own.

“I’m fine,” he says, with a forced attempt at a smile. Then he squares his shoulders and enters the school. El has already disappeared way up ahead without a word, which is also weird, but there’s nothing he can do about it. They’re all on edge and he doesn’t know why. All he knows is that-

“Hey, Horowitz!” 

He all but jumps out of his skin. Tony is right in front of him, a large grin on his face, no trace of the discomfort of last night. Completely wiped away. Will swallows nervously. “Hey.”

He leans closer and Will shivers. “You okay?”

Will manages a nod.

Tony moves back, and Will _aches._ He looks even better than he did last night. Hair ruffled and soft-looking, skin smooth, cheekbones somehow even higher. “You sure? We can skip class if you want, I know a spot we can go smoke by the lake-”

“No, no, we should- we should go to class.” Somehow Tony has forgotten how last night ended, while Will can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop replaying the moment over and over in his head. He isn’t keen to remind him of it. He doesn’t want any more of that rejection. 

“Ugh, fine,” Tony says, and gives him a glimpse of shining white teeth in another grin. “Let’s go to homeroom, then. I’m in the mood for pissing Reyes off.”

Will nods, swept up in his words and his voice and his smile. He shouldn’t have let this happen. He knew it would go wrong. This is another small town, another place that treats people badly. The Byers (Horowitzes, now) don’t get so many stares, not like before, but that could easily change. This isn’t San Francisco. And yet.

After homeroom they’re all herded into the gym for some kind of special assembly. Briefly Will spots El in the crowd a couple yards away and resists the urge to call out to her. She’s hunched, looking at the floor, not talking to anyone. But she’s swallowed up by the press of students, and then Ryan is by his side with a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, did something happen last night after I left? You’re acting weird.”

Will looks around at him in alarm. “What? No- no, I’m not. Nothing happened.”

Ryan just raises his eyebrows. “Alright, man, just asking. C’mon.” He tugs him down to sit on the bleachers, and a moment later Tony drops down on the level below them. Will pointedly stares straight ahead, instead of at the back of his head and those perfect dark curls.

The headteacher has to shout about five times for silence before the flood of voices dies down, and then his position on the podium is replaced by a short woman in a yellow suit with coiffed blonde hair. Will takes one look at her and instantly feels his insides shrivel up with revulsion, though he doesn’t really know why. 

Ryan, however, does. “Shit, that’s Amanda Dalton.”

“Who?”

“An evil bitch, that’s who.” Tony’s low voice is razor-sharp with hatred and Will blinks at the back of his head in surprise. 

Ryan sighs. “She’s big on the Moral Majority thing. Big fan of Pat Pulling, y’know, the woman who thinks Dungeons and Dragons is Satanism? The whole thing’s nuts.”

“She’s a racist piece of shit, too,” Tony hisses. “Thinks anyone who isn’t white, straight or Christian is the spawn of Satan.”

Will’s heart starts to thud in his chest. _Great._ If nothing else his mom is Jewish, although they don’t practice it, and that’s putting aside the whole _not straight_ thing. His hands feel suddenly clammy. What is this woman doing here? Here to infect everyone into hating him even more- when he’d _just_ gotten awayfrom being _zombie boy_ and _fairy_ \- here to ruin his life all over again-

He becomes aware that he’s panicking when he feels Ryan’s hand on his arm, but his voice is underwater. _Amanda Dalton_ ’s voice is underwater, which is definitely a good thing because anything she has to say will be something bad. He tries to do what his mom taught him, measuring his breathing and focusing on the world around him, but it doesn’t help. _It doesn’t help_ , because the world around him involves the back of Tony’s head and Amanda Dalton’s grating voice and being told DnD is just for kids was one thing, sure, but to be told it’s for _evil degenerates_ and that both will burn in hell…

So he does what he does best. He hides. He hides inside himself.

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again it’s with a _jolt_ that shudders through his body in aftershocks like an earthquake, and the gym is empty and everything is blue.

Just this once, the Upside Down doesn’t make him want to curl up into a terrified ball on the floor and call for his mom. No, this time it makes his panic subside. The tightness in his chest, his throat, eases. He uncurls himself and stands up on the bleachers, looks down at the vast expanse of the gym now crawling with twisted shadows. 

He hasn’t been here in a while. It’s exactly the same.

But no- not exactly. There’s something different in the air. It’s less oppressive, less cloying. He feels like he can breathe. 

He climbs down the bleachers and leaves the gym without a backwards glance. The corridor is the same, blue and shadowy. He starts to walk faster, hurrying towards the front, the exit. He needs to see the sky. He needs to know that _He_ isn’t here. 

And then he’s outside, and he’s looking up at the sky, and it’s calm and quiet. Blue, not red. No storm. No Mindflayer. The relief that floods through him makes his knees weak, and he doubles over in the parking lot, almost grinning. _He’s not here. He didn’t follow us. He’s not here._

Finally he straightens up and turns back to the school, and his relief begins to crumble. It’s replaced by alarm, confusion. He frowns.

Because on the front wall of the school is the massive, oppressive outline of an eye. Thick and dark and _watching._ It’s not… malicious, necessarily. It’s watching but it’s not _evil_ , not like the Mindflayer. It doesn’t look like it wants to kill. It just… looks. 

Slowly, hesitantly, he approaches it. The top of it is about a foot above his head, the bottom touching the ground. Huge and black, like it could swallow him up. And strangely magnetic, too. It draws him ever closer. Closer and closer, until the black pupil fills his field of vision and all he can see is black-

And then the black does swallow him. It floods all around him, blotting out the Upside Down like ink spilled across a page. Everything is black and he is scared, now, because this is something different. Something new. This place - not a place, really, a no-place - is empty and soundless. The ground beneath his feet faintly ripples when he moves but his sneakers aren’t waterproof and his feet aren’t wet. It’s like what El told him about, _the Inbetween._ The place she goes to find people. The place she found him.

The black isn’t threatening. Just empty. He looks around for a while longer, letting the tension in his spine subside again. He’s fine. This is fine. Any second now he’ll be brought out of this like usual, like before, it will be fine-

But then there’s a _sound._ No- not a sound, exactly. A feeling. A feeling that’s loud, so loud it thrums through his bones and makes his teeth ache. The darkness tilts. And then he’s not looking into the darkness, not anymore. He’s looking into a huge dark eye, colorless like in a black and white movie but _real_ , a massive human eye, only it’s not human, not really, it’s alien and cold and ancient, oh so ancient, staring him down with a force that makes his skull pound like it’s going to burst. 

He’s bleeding. He feels it dripping from his nose, his ears, and looking straight ahead at this _Thing_ hurts, takes all his strength, but he can’t look away. He can’t look away. He’s fixed, staring at it like it’s all there is, now, and in the reflections mirrored in the massive dark pupil he doesn’t see himself staring back. He sees _visions_. People dancing in a hall, old-fashioned like how his mom tried to teach him to dance. A man driving in a car in the snow, too far away for him to make out the man’s face. A white lighthouse in the middle of rushing water. A gaping dark cave. A clock counting backwards and then forwards, two seconds back, one forward, three back, four forward, two back-

And then he’s tugged backwards, and it’s over.

He opens his eyes and he’s back in the gym and Amanda Dalton is still speaking, Ryan is still beside him, Tony is still in front of him. Nothing has changed. He brings a hand to his lip and there’s no blood. 

“-your own safety and the safety of your community, I urge you to reject the unhealthy, un-Christian influences that surround you everywhere, and take action against them. Thank you.” The students applaud unenthusiastically as Amanda Dalton leaves the podium but Will just stares into the middle distance. What he saw- he can’t get it out of his head. It replays behind his eyes on a loop: dancing, car, lighthouse, cave, clock. Dancing, car, lighthouse, cave, clock. What does it mean? What could it possibly mean? Maybe he’s finally going crazy. Maybe he’s completely and utterly lost it- hallucinating in assembly-

Tony has turned to look at him. “Will? You okay?”

Will manages a nod, looking down at him, but then his eyes move to a point beyond him in the next row where he can see Darren and Jack sitting together and sniggering. “Take action, huh?” Darren is saying, clearly not caring who hears him. “How about we take action against Little Miss Satan herself, E.T. over there?”

Will doesn’t have to look to know who they’re pointing at. Fury bubbles in his veins and not for the first time he wishes he had El’s powers, so that with one look he could break Darren’s nose or _worse_. But he doesn’t, and he can’t.

Out in the hallway it gets worse. Darren is leaning against the bank of lockers, and when El walks past him, shoulders hunched, eyes on the floor, he sticks his leg out and sends her flying - just like he did in the cafeteria yesterday, splattering her dinner all over her clothes. 

Will didn’t do anything then. He was in the queue for his own food, talking to Ryan, and he only saw the aftermath: El dragging herself to her feet, covered in gravy, her nose bleeding but Darren just sitting there and laughing, and laughing, and laughing. Everyone watching, the cafeteria silent and shocked. 

He didn’t do anything then, but he can do something now. 

“Hey!” he yells, shoving his way to the front. El is already standing up, face blotchy with anger - anger that turns on him when he steps forward again. “What the hell is your problem?”

Darren pushes himself off the lockers and sneers at him. There’s a circle forming around them now, the three of them, hemmed in like for a boxing match. Will can hear the blood pounding in his ears. “What’s my problem? I have a problem with your creepy-ass sister, that’s my problem. Why don’t you do us all a favor and take her back to the Cassville loony bin where she belongs?”

_Loony bin._

Will’s fist collides with his nose.

It breaks with a satisfying _thunk._ He staggers back and blood drips onto his shirt. Will’s hand begins to sting as El grabs his arm and tugs him to the side, hissing with wide eyes “What is _wrong_ with you?”

Nothing, he wants to say. Absolutely nothing. 

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

Karen tries not to pry. Really, she tries. Her kids each have their own (locked!) room, they basically each have their own _phones_ for god’s sake. She lets them go off wherever they want pretty much whenever they want, because Hawkins is safe. 

(Well, apart from when Will went missing, and when Bob Newby - that sweet guy at the electronics store - got mauled by a bear, and when over thirty people died for, well, no reason, and when the Chief died in the mall fire…)

In honesty, the fact that she tries so hard _not_ to pry has to be a testament to her being a good mother, right? Under the circumstances. Under all the… weird things that have happened in the last few years. 

Similarly, a small lapse is forgivable.

This is what she tells herself as she tugs out a hairpin and picks the lock on Nancy’s door. It swings open easily enough and as she crosses the threshold she tells herself that this is what any mother would do: investigate whatever her daughter’s got involved in that means she drives around with a bleeding concussion with two just-teenagers in the backseat. 

Nancy’s room is the same as always. Pink and pastel, the bed carelessly made, the desk stacked with school books. This isn’t where Karen heads, because anything left there is something Nancy is letting her see. (Karen tries not to pry, but her daughter thinks she will anyway.) No, she goes to the bedside cabinet first, finds nothing except some empty notebooks and a dusty box of condoms, which she supposes she should have expected. At least they were being safe, when Jonathan was still here. And at least they haven’t been used since. 

Then - with an effort - she tugs up the mattress and sweeps her hand under it. _Bingo._ She comes out with a thick notebook. She has to repress a smile as she sits down on the bed to leaf through it, because that’s exactly the spot she used to hide things she didn’t want her own mother to see, more than twenty years ago when she was Nancy’s age. And then the almost-smile drops, because she’s _nervous._ She doesn’t know what she’s going to find, does she? But then again, what’s the worst it can be? That Nancy’s cheating on Jonathan. That she’s been skipping school. That she’s taking drugs- oh god- or what if she’s _pregnant? Oh my god what if she’s pregnant._ She can’t be _pregnant_ \- Karen’s little girl with so much ambition- she can’t turn out like Elle, the girl in Karen’s year who got pregnant at sixteen, or even Joyce, who Karen remembers was still a pariah even though she was nineteen when Lonnie knocked her up-

She forces herself to take a deep breath. There’s no way Nancy’s pregnant. She’s too careful, too pragmatic for that. That box of condoms is there for a reason. So she swallows her fears and opens up the notebook. 

She’s disappointed. It’s rather incomprehensible, really. Random names scattered all over the place - _Murray, Owens, Brenner, Steve’s Dad? HNL. Investigate land ownership. 011 - other numbers. Russia? Look into Mayor Kline. Foundation of the lab - talk to Joyce, living here when it began. Roots. _

Bits of it make sense, of course they do, she recognises _Steve’s Dad_ and _Mayor Kline_ and _Joyce,_ but she can’t reconcile these names with the rest. What does it _mean?_ Is Nancy conducting some sort of investigation? Continuing with what she did at the Hawkins Post, only by herself? 

There are photos, too. Barbara, Will, the Byers’ old house before they moved. News clippings slipped in between the pages - _The Boy Who Came Back To Life_ and _Local Hero Police Chief Dies in Mall Fire_. It’s a scrapbook, a scrapbook of all the weird things that have happened in Hawkins these last few years - and longer. She spots a cutting of an article from the seventies. The words _Dr. Brenner_ and _Hawkins Lab_ jump out at her and there’s a photo - a photo of a man she recognises. A man she’s met. A man who looked at her across her table and told her that everything would be okay, that she’d been unknowingly harboring a Soviet spy in her basement but everything would be okay anyway, and who she wanted to believe but there was something, just _something,_ nagging at her and telling her she shouldn’t. 

What the hell is Nancy doing? 

This is deeper than anything she could have expected, anticipated. This is like she’s stumbled across something _bad._ But no- not stumbled across. Run into headlong. Nancy’s always been like that, but back then it was school projects, not _conspiracies._ Because that’s what this looks like. A conspiracy. A conspiracy at the heart of Hawkins, is what it looks like. Karen’s throat clenches.

There’s nothing else in the notebook that she can make sense of, so she tucks it back under the mattress and straightens the sheets out of habit. Then she hovers over the bedside table, the framed picture of Nancy and Barb that used to be on the wall. Nancy has never been the same, she thinks. Maybe that’s what this is all about. Because there was some conspiracy involved with that, wasn’t there? Karen doesn’t really remember. She just remembers going to Nancy’s room after the funeral, intending to offer a shoulder to cry on since she thought she would probably need it, and instead finding her pillowed between Jonathan and Steve, muffling her sobs with a hand.

Somewhere along the way Karen lost touch with her oldest daughter, and she has no idea how to fix it.

When she goes downstairs she finds Ted in his chair as always. He works from home on Fridays, apparently, but there isn’t much ‘work’ about it. She wouldn’t mind if he helped out more. If he made dinner once in a while, or drove Holly to school, or really did anything that isn’t just mowing the lawn once a week, because she doesn’t care about the lawn, goddamnit. The lawn doesn’t _matter._ All the other stuff, like _feeding their children_ , matters.

But hopefully she won’t have to put up with it much longer. No, scratch that, she _won’t_ have to put up with it much longer. She’s gonna get a job, that she’s decided, something part time to save up money. And then- when Holly’s old enough-

Part of her doubts that even divorce would make him rise from his chair. 

“Can you collect Mike and Nancy from school this evening, please?”

He looks at her. “Aren’t they old enough to make it by themselves?”

“Yes, Ted, they are, but that’s not the point. If you’d been _listening_ you’d know that I _grounded_ Nancy and stopped her from using my car-”

“So why can’t you do it?”

She stares at him. He stares back, glum, _what-did-I-do_. _I sure hope you’re enjoying your chicken, Ted. That’s_ what he cares about? Why she can’t pick them up? Not why his model student, straight-A daughter has been grounded? “I have a PTA meeting at the elementary school.”

He blinks at her. She can see him working up to an excuse behind his eyes. The cogs whirring, thinking up a reason she can’t say no to - or simply doesn’t have the energy to say no to. More fool him. She’s learnt a thing or two, lately. Watching her daughter’s quiet grief at the departure of her boyfriend. It taught Karen the opposite of what you’d expect. It taught her that sometimes - just sometimes - you have to do something for yourself, no matter the consequences. That’s what Joyce Byers did, in leaving Hawkins. _She got herself out._ Karen envies her.

He seems to see her defiance, maybe in the tight line of her jaw, maybe in the way her eyes have gone dark. “Yeah, okay. Sure.”

She doesn’t let herself deflate with relief, although she wants to. She could miss the PTA meeting but she doesn’t want to. She wants to make Ted pull his weight for a change. But it’s an uphill battle, and every victory is dragged from the open mouth of defeat. 

She drives into town in Ted’s BMW, because her own car’s in the shop thanks to the crushed fender Nancy gave it the other night. The Blue Nile is playing on the radio, some old thing from two years ago. She nods along to it anyway absently, her mind on other things.

    _Do I love you? Yes, I love you_
    _But it's easy come, and it's easy go_
    _All this talking is only bravado yeah_
    _Oh, Tinseltown_
    _Tinseltown in the rain_

She pulls up outside the office building and only hovers over the steering wheel for a moment, just a moment. She counts that as a victory. 

Inside she reports to the receptionist and is directed to the bank of chairs along the wall. Primly she crosses one leg over the other and settles her handbag in her lap, eyeing the words on the door nervously. _Barry Kilcullen, Attorney at Law._

She’s not divorcing him. Not yet. But if she can get some help to set up another bank account- one of her own, just hers-

“Mrs. Wheeler?” 

She looks up, and is surprised to see one of the last faces she would have expected to see here. Steve is looking at her quizzically, a heavy black binder in his arms, his hair as big and styled as ever. He puts her to shame. “Oh, Steve, hi.” She tries not to let her voice climb in pitch - because she’s nervous. She doesn’t want Steve to guess why she’s here, though it’s probably easily discernible. Housewives getting divorces are dime-a-dozen now, in 1986, even in Hawkins. They might even let her stay on the PTA committee.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, frowning mildly. It’s not malicious - he genuinely doesn’t know. She supposes his parents have been together long enough, through thick and thin, because that’s what you’re _meant_ to do. Karen’s tired of doing what she’s meant to do. 

“Oh, just… sorting out some finances.” 

He nods, and sits down beside her heavily, carelessly, long limbs going everywhere. He reminds her a little of Mike - but only a little. Mike is gangly and weird. (She’s his mother but she can admit he’s weird.) Steve, even though he’s apparently become the kids’ babysitter, is still- well. She doesn’t know what it is. Maybe it’s all that money. Because she and Ted are wealthy, sure, middle-class suburbia wealthy, but the Harringtons are a whole different deal. She frowns to herself as she tries to remember what business John Harrington is in. Property, she thinks. Or was it pharmaceuticals…? “What are you doing here?” she asks in turn, when it becomes clear he’s not going to respond. He’s staring straight ahead at the wall glumly.

“Just some stuff for my dad. Legal trouble, y’know, it’s not a big deal.” Then he looks faintly horrified. “It’s really not a big deal. I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget that, please?” 

She nearly laughs, but then she catches how serious his face is. This isn’t just a kid wanting to please his father. This is a kid who _has_ to please his father, or else. She can only imagine what the _or else_ is. “My lips are sealed,” she says, with a smile as warm as she can make it. 

“Mrs. Wheeler?” 

She looks up. It’s a man she can only assume is Barry Kilcullen himself, leaning out of that ominous door. Slicked back hair, smartly pressed double-breasted suit. She’s glad he’s on her husband’s retainer, she thinks, and then tries not to gasp at her own boldness. She’s making the preparations to divorce her husband on her husband’s dime. _Isn’t that something_ , she marvels as she steps inside, Steve forgotten.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

Owens isn’t scared of much. He’s faced down CIA officials, monsters from other dimensions, and the dean of Harvard (notoriously a hardass you don’t want to cross). He’s the one saddled with all this sci-fi crap, the one whose office plaque reads _Dr. Samuel Owens, Director of Operations of Special Relativity, U.S. Department of Energy._ It’s all bullshit, of course. They chose the word ‘Operations’ because then it sounds like they have some element of control over all this shit, like they’re choosing to fuck up a small town in Indiana once a year. It makes them sue-able but it also makes them look powerful, and _powerful_ is all the government has ever cared about. He isn’t scared of much because no one dares go toe-to-toe with him, not anymore, because he’s the crazy fucker who took Dr. Brenner’s job and survived to tell the tale. He isn’t scared of much.

But this, this frightens him. 

Sitting here in this shitty little roadside diner, hearing the roar of traffic outside as he stirs sugar into his gritty black coffee. The tables are lacquered blue, to match the sticky blue tiles on the floor. It’s almost empty, save for half-a-dozen men in too-casual clothes, each sitting alone in a booth. They’re dressed like truckers but only one of them is eating, and he’s eating a bologna sandwich. _Amateurs_ , Owens thinks. A trucker comes into a place like this, he wants something hearty and/or greasy. A fat omelette and fries at the healthiest. He wouldn’t be caught dead eating a bologna sandwich, or worse - just ordering a coffee.

Still, this is his protection detail, so he has to deal with it. He himself is dressed- well, he’s not sure what he’s dressed as. A flannel shirt and ripped - ripped! - jeans. Maybe his protection detail just wanted to humiliate him. They’re not succeeding, since they’re also making abundant fools of themselves in the process.

He focuses his gaze on his coffee. She’ll be here soon. Bizarrely it feels like he’s in one of those awful romance movies; this is the tragic moment in which he meets with the woman and tells her he can’t leave his wife and kids for her after all. The apprehension in his gut certainly feels Oscar-worthy – but he’s never been in this position before. He’s always cared about work more than his personal life, and this is where it leaves him. Watching the door of this shitty little diner waiting to give Joyce Byers a revelation that is no less crushing.

He’s finished his coffee and is halfway through a watery cup of tea (because his doctor told him to cut caffeine down to one cup a day) when Murray Bauman comes in, fidgeting, one hand on the pitifully concealed gun under his coat. When he’d arrived Owens’ protection detail had tried to make a fuss but Owens had let him keep it. They’re all tense, and this will probably go along a lot smoother if Bauman feels like he can protect himself if he needs to.

Of course, Owens could be wrong. Bauman is the type that’s wildly unpredictable. He seems the type to go down shooting without just cause, and that’s exactly why Owens thinks he won’t. He’s rarely wrong about people.

(Monsters and other dimensions, those he’s wrong about a lot. Painfully often. Frankly, enough to make the suspicion in Bauman’s eyes reasonable.)

“She’s not here yet,” Bauman says over the gentle 60s music playing (Bobby Vee, he estimates), sitting down across from him and running his fingers through his scraggly black beard. Owens resists cringing at the movement. “She probably won’t show, after the way you treated her on the phone.”

Mildly, he raises an eyebrow. “Really? She didn’t seem to think much of your own telephone manner.”

Bauman honest-to-god sneers at him, like they’re in fifth grade. “She’s not gonna show. She’s spooked. Ha, _spooked_ by the goddamn _spook_ over here. Well done, Dr. Owens. Great job.” He doesn’t clap his hands, though he looks like he wants to.

Despite himself, Owens is drawn in. “Listen, we’re here because _you_ think this is worth a shot. She needs to know, sure - hell, we need her to know. If you think what I said to her was so bad then you should’ve done a better job yourself, shouldn’t you?”

Bauman is sullen. Owens thinks absently that Bauman probably likes Mrs. Byers a hell of a lot more than she likes him. Maybe it’s sexual or romantic, or maybe he just respects her that much. Because she’s very easy to respect. Owens recognises that. And he wants to help her and her family, though she doesn’t want his help. But he needs her help, too. This isn’t just a courtesy call. This is deeper than that.

He runs his finger around the rim of his mug and surveys Bauman frankly over the table. “Whatever happens here today, _we need her._ You’re aware how much. We can’t afford to alienate her.”

“I don’t see why it has to be _her_ specifically,” Bauman sniffs. “There are plenty of little brats running around who know as much as she does about it.”

Owens raises his eyebrows. “Are you really suggesting I take minors to Soviet Russia?”

Bauman lowers his eyes. “...No. But Joyce-”

He really doesn’t want this to become a _thing._ He really hates it when people argue with him, though it happens all the time. Bauman is one of the worst cases, because he thinks he knows everything and doesn’t trust the government at all - a lethal combination. (Though on that last point he’s probably wise. Owens doesn’t trust the government either.)

Bauman’s got his mouth open to respond but then out of the corner of his eye Owens sees one of his men stand up, a hand on the gun at his hip, and he stiffens. Bauman turns to look too. Out of the window they can see what the guy is staring at - a little green car in the parking lot that hadn’t been there before. Joyce Byers’ car.

Feeling unreasonably nervous, Owens watches as his men go out to it. The car is empty. He’s watching them come back in when he feels something cold and solid pressed to the back of his head, and he stiffens. 

“Turn around, slowly.” 

Her voice, too, is hard, and she’s holding the handgun evenly with practice she definitely didn’t have a year ago, he sees when he turns. Dark hair tied up out of her hollow, tired face, bangs grown out. (They’ll have to update the image on her file.) She’s wearing jeans and a coat that could be concealing any number of other weapons. Owens swallows. He’s not scared of her. (He’s a little bit scared of her.)

Behind him Bauman starts to snigger, because apparently this whole thing is just fucking _hilarious._

“What the hell is your problem?” she asks, directing it over Owens’ head. 

“Oh, nothing. Just- you’re not gonna want to shoot him. Not yet, anyway. Not until you find out what he has to tell you. Then, you’ll probably want to shoot him.”

Her eyes narrow and her cheeks flush. She looks really, really pissed off. Owens doesn’t blame her. “Listen,” he tries, “why don’t you- why don’t you sit down.”

She looks at him for a moment, then indicates with her gun for him to move to sit in the opposite side of the booth, next to Bauman. He complies. His men have probably caught wind of the situation by now, but he hopes they’ll be smart enough to let it happen. Gun or no gun, she’s here. That’s what they wanted.

She sits down too, still aiming the gun squarely at his face. His tea’s gone cold. “So what is it? What the hell do you want? I’ve said this before, I’m _done_ with you people. I’m out. How- how did you even get my number?”

It’s difficult to look at Bauman from his position beside him, but if he could it would be a rueful look. Giving the paranoid man a reason to be paranoid isn’t an achievement, exactly, but it got the job done. Tapping his phone was almost ridiculously easy, even though he’d moved twice.

“I appreciate all that. And I’m sorry, Joyce, I really am. The last thing I want to do is drag you into this whole mess again-”

Both Joyce and Bauman manage to scoff simultaneously. (Maybe he can see why they get on.) 

“-But there’s something you need to know.” He swallows, hard. This is the difficult bit. This is the bit in which he really wishes she wasn’t holding that gun, because there’s nothing to stop her pulling the trigger out of pure emotional overload. “Joyce-”

Her jaw has tightened, like she’s afraid of what he’s going to say. She should be.

“It’s the Chief. Hopper,” he hastens to add, because this has to be more personal than that. “We-”

“What?” Her voice is no more than a whisper. Even Bauman is silent, for which Owens is eternally thankful. 

“We think he’s alive.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

El pops the bubblegum one of the less mean girls in her class gave her and drops her chin into her hand with a sigh. The movie theatre is a terrible place to hang out when you’re not here to see a movie. The floor is sticky, the counter she’s sitting on strewn with old hardened bits of gum, and the slushies produced by the red and blue slushie maker don’t even taste nice. She sighs and blows another bubble, staring across at the movie poster across from her. It’s for that movie from last summer, _The Breakfast Club._ She saw it with Max right before they moved, on one of the few days she’d had the will to go anywhere. She’d liked it, for the most part. Molly Ringwald is pretty. But she hadn’t understood why Ally Sheedy had needed to change so dramatically, not really. Sure, she was pretty afterwards, but wasn’t she pretty before?

But then again, she thinks, it’s probably just one of those things she doesn’t get. There’s a lot she doesn’t get. Like cliques, or themes in literature, or why Will’s being such an idiot.

“You okay, little girl?” An old lady is eyeing her, clutching her handbag to her chest primly. 

El glares. She’s not a _little girl._ But she’s learnt politeness, at least. That she understands. “I’m fine,” she says, but clearly it comes out too snappy because the lady tuts, muttering something about “the youth of today”, and walks away fast. El returns to her position staring across the foyer. She’s meant to be waiting here for Jonathan to finish his shift and drive them home with Will. That was the _plan_. But the plan went - as Mike has taught her - _completely to shit._ Because Darren was an asshole, again, which she’s used to by now, and Will tried defending her, which she’s very much not used to - not in public, anyway. He defended her and _threw a goddamn punch_ , which was stupid, because now he has detention.

She smiled to see him do it, though. It wasn’t a very good punch, that’s true. She’s sure she could do much better. But still, Darren came back up with blood on his face. He came back up with a snarl and blood on his face and tried to hit Will in turn, but then the crowd surged forward and he never got the chance. The crowd protected Will from Darren but not from the principal, so now he’s in detention. 

She wonders if it’s anything like _The Breakfast Club._ If it is, she wonders which one he is. The brain, probably. She’d be the basket case. Nancy, Mike’s sister, would be the princess. But bitchin’. Molly Ringwald if Molly Ringwald kicked ass. The jock - maybe Steve? The older boy Dustin’s so attached to? She’s stuck on the rebel when Jonathan comes up to her, mop in hand, wiping his hair out of his eyes with a weary look. 

“Hey,” he says, as he props the mop in a corner and takes off his red work smock. “You okay?”

She nods, sitting up on the counter. “Why are they showing a movie from last year?” She nods at the poster. She’s new to the world but she’s pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

He shrugs. “It’s always like that here. They haven’t had a new movie in ages. Where’s Will?”

She looks at her feet. “Detention.”

“ _What?”_

“Yeah.” Jonathan sounds mad. She’s mad too. She’s mad at Will for thinking she can’t fight her own battles; she’s mad at the world for making her less able to. “He won’t be done until, like, six thirty, he said.”

“Shit. That means I have to drive out and get him again, or else Mom will, so dinner will be late…” 

She just shrugs. 

“Fine.” He runs another hand through his hair. It’s become a sort of nervous tic, she’s noticed. Like how Joyce chews on her thumbnail and Will’s leg jigs up and down. “C’mon, I’ll drive you home.” He ruffles her hair, without thinking about it, and she lets him, without thinking about it. She likes Jonathan. He makes her feel normal.

In the car he turns the radio up and the first song to come on is by Echo and the Bunnymen, a band she knows he likes that she likes too. Somehow he always manages to find the music he wants, no matter where they are, no matter what time of day. She manages to smile at him over the gearstick as the dark, icy town rushes past.

    _Fate_
    _Up against your will_
    _Through the thick and thin_
    _He will wait until_
    _You give yourself to him._

He smiles back. “Good day?”

She thinks about the assembly that morning, that woman condemning anything and everything that wasn’t absolutely perfect and normal, doing all but call El a product of Satan to her face. El doesn’t know much about Satan, but she knows enough. She knows what the kids at school call her, to her face and behind her back. She knows this is why Will hit Darren. She also knows she shouldn’t bother Jonathan about it, just like she didn’t want to bother Joyce. “Yeah. Yeah, it was good.”

The truth will come out somehow, she knows. ( _Friends don’t lie_ , she thinks, and winces. But she’s been taught something else since then, a little thing called _white lies._ It’s better if Jonathan doesn’t know. It’s better all around.) But for now, she will deal with it on her own.

It’s beginning to snow again when they pull into their driveway. El is already halfway out the car when she notices the figure standing in front of their porch, and for reasons she can’t explain a chill races down her spine. Jonathan comes up beside her and she can tell he hasn’t noticed yet. And, as she thought, he asks, “What’re you waiting for?”

Wordlessly, she nods in the direction of the figure. They’re silhouetted against the porch light in the gloom, features obscured by the dark and the snow. Jonathan stiffens. “Wait here,” he says quietly, as he steps forward. She ignores him. “Can I help you?”

The figure moves forward, into the light of the streetlamps. It’s a woman, older than Joyce, with lined skin and a fixed, eerie expression. El involuntarily takes a step back. But the woman’s gaze follows her. She doesn’t look at Jonathan, not even once, not even when he speaks again. “Hello? Who are you? What do you want?”

Her face splits into a grin. There’s nothing particularly frightening about her appearance, at least on paper. She’s an average-looking woman, about sixty, El thinks. But there’s something _about_ her. Something around her, within her, something dark. Something _deep_. Compared to her, the rest of the town and their lives here feels shallow, somehow. El is simultaneously repulsed and drawn endlessly in. 

“It’s you,” the woman says, staring at El. “It wants _you._ It’s coming back for you. It’s waiting.”

El can’t tear her eyes away. She stares at the woman so long it’s like she can see through her skin, see her bare skull as her muscles and blood slough away, decaying and black…

Then the woman straightens up suddenly, face blank once again. She walks past them- no, not walks. _Lurches_ , like her body isn’t her own, like she’s a puppet on clumsy strings. El watches her go until she can’t anymore, heart pounding. What _was_ that? 

Jonathan’s hand lands on her shoulder and she whips around. He looks just as alarmed as she feels. “You okay?” he asks, quietly. “That was- I don’t know what that was.”

She nods, though she’s not sure she feels it. She doesn’t know what it was either. But it brings her back to July, to not-Max’s brother’s clouded eyes, _you let us in_. It can’t be the same as that. It _can’t._ They’re far away from Hawkins now, far away from the Lab and the gate and all that came with it-

Right?

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

** An Hour Earlier **

“Welcome to detention, students. You’re all here for some dreadful instance of wrongdoing, blah blah blah, most of you are familiar faces so you know the drill. Get on with your homework in _silence._ If you by some miracle don’t have any homework, let me know and I’ll assign you some.” Mr. Olson looks them over with narrowed eyes; no one is listening. “If you’re good, I’ll release you five minutes early. If not, we can be here until seven. I’m a sad and lonely old man who’s got nowhere else to be, and I take great pleasure in inflicting my pain on you.” Of course he doesn’t actually say this last sentence, but that’s what Will gets from it.

Tony is smirking at the desk across from him, but Will doesn’t feel so cheerful. He’s kind of fucked up. His hand, bandaged by the nurse before they sent him to the principal’s office, still stings. Thoughtlessly he runs the thumb of his other hand over the damaged knuckles and winces. 

El’s mad at him. El’s _really_ mad at him, which he probably should have anticipated before he broke Darren’s nose.

It felt good though. Not good, obviously, it _hurt_ , but _good._ For a moment as Darren was still staggering back and the pain in his hand hadn’t hit and El hadn’t said in a harsh whisper “What is _wrong_ with you?”, it felt really fucking good. And then reality rushed in, and he was being carted off to the nurse’s office and then the principal’s office and finally detention. 

He’s not sure why Tony’s here. Will’s not enjoying that he is, either, because everytime he looks over at him his gaze flickers to his lips, and then he flushes furiously and has to look away. What is _wrong_ with him? Punching Darren, kissing Tony. He feels like a different person. 

He has math homework, but without even thinking about it he starts drawing instead. 

Within ten minutes Mr. Olson has fallen asleep, as he apparently does every detention he supervises, and Tony is leaning over Will’s desk. “Nice punch,” he murmurs. “I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier.”

Will flushes again. “Thanks.” Then, desperate to change the subject, “What did you get detention for, then?”

“Asked a load of annoying questions about Amanda Dalton. Turns out the anti-Satanists don’t like it when you quote _turn the other cheek_ at them.”

Will can just imagine him saying that, the way he’d smile innocently as he did it, the way he’d brush back a fallen lock of hair like he didn’t have a care in the world… Furiously, Will buries the image at the back of his mind, ignoring the flutter of his heart. 

“What’re you working on?” Tony leans closer to look at Will’s desk, a hand landing on Will’s shoulder. He shivers - and then hurriedly gathers up his papers. His pencil has been moving almost of its own accord and it’s drawn those weird, eerie visions (hallucinations?) he saw when assembly melted away. He doesn’t want Tony to see them. He doesn’t want Tony to think that maybe it’s him who belongs in _the loony bin_ , rather than El. “Whoa, what _is_ this?”

Tony’s holding one that must have slipped to the floor. There’s a weird note in his voice and Will feels his heart rate spike. _Shit, shit, shit._ This is _it’s not my fault you don’t like girls_ all over again, he knows it, he _knows_ it-

He’s on his feet and out of the classroom before Tony can say anything else. He bolts into the nearest bathroom and shuts himself in a stall, pulling his legs up on the grimy toilet seat and trying to count his breathing. _Great_ , the only rational part of his mind thinks, _now Tony’s_ definitely _gonna think I’m a freak._

Tony’s face, the image hovering behind his eyelids, becomes Mike’s face, becomes Tony’s face, becomes Mike’s face-

_It’s not my fault you don’t like girls._

_I shouldn’t have done that._

And then- _You’ve done nothing to make me want to be your father._

Lonnie said this the last time Will saw him, the last time he’d bothered to show up for visitation; he bought Will lunch at the greasiest diner in Hawkins and expressed disinterest in everything he said. Finally, in a rare show of bravery, Will asked “Why don’t you want to be my dad?” in a terribly small voice.

Lonnie, looking over to him and nursing his beer: “You’ve done nothing to make me want to be your father,” his voice bored. Will squeezes his eyes shut like that will make the memory go away. It doesn’t work.

He knows what’s coming next in the parade of memories, knows it like clockwork ( _A clock counting backwards and then forwards, two seconds back, one forward, three back, four forward, two back-_ ), but the air is still dragged from his lungs when the Mind Flayer invades his head. Shadows, everywhere. Evil dripping from every pore. (He’s so scared- _go away!-_ It won’t go away- _I felt it everywhere-_ )

When he opens his eyes, all he sees is blue. Then he blinks and focuses, and realises that it’s the blue of the door of the bathroom stall. He can feel the Upside Down swirling around him, inside him, but when he looks up he can see the striplights glowing unflinchingly on the ceiling - and when he opens the door, he finds the weak rays of sunset light filtering through the window high in the wall. 

For a moment he blames his disorientation on his barely-finished panic attack, but that’s not it. He looks around and realises - the sinks are in the wrong place. The blue of the door is the wrong shade of blue, too dark, too cold. And it’s different, but it’s not unfamiliar.

It’s the bathroom at Hawkins Middle.

Okay, so he’s definitely hallucinating. He pinches himself but all it does is sting. Then he runs a hand over the admittedly gross tiles on the wall - they feel real enough. But it can’t be real. Can it? No way he travelled seven hundred miles in the blink of an eye. 

Hesitantly, he steps out into the hallway. And there’s no mistaking it - this is Hawkins. The same hallway he ran down to escape the Mind Flayer; the same hallway El murdered ten government agents (or so he’s been told). The same blue stripe on the walls, the same big Hawkins Tigers paw print logo. His first thought is, he’s _home._ And then he feels a little guilty about that, about his mom’s grief and desperation, everything they sacrificed to get here, but not that much.

Now he just wants to see Mike.

He breaks into a fast walk as he turns the corner into a hallway full of kids - younger than him now, he realises - talking to their friends, fiddling with their lockers, getting ready to go home for the day. He finds himself searching for Mike, and Dustin and Lucas and Max in the throng, before kicking himself. Of course. They’re in high school now, same as him. 

It feels weird. A part of him wants to retain the image of them at the top of middle school, not quite kids but nowhere near adults, forever. _We’re not kids anymore._ Part of him still wishes they could be kids forever.

As he passes, a few of the kids give him weird looks. He feels suddenly self-conscious because here- here he’s not Will Horowitz. Here he’s Will Byers, zombie boy, the boy who came back to life. Everyone knows that. And everyone knows that they moved.

He ducks his head and can only breathe easy when he’s made it outside, to the field where he came back to himself with the Mind Flayer inside him. He looks around and it’s Hawkins, all right. The snow is sparse, less suffocating than it is in Minnesota. The sky above him is fading into a gentle orange. 

Holy shit, he thinks. Then, _holy shit._

There’s something thrumming around him that wasn’t there before. Like electricity, but not really. It’s quieter, deeper than that, like- like the fabric of the world is trembling. Like it’s thinned out, and if he wants to- if he really wants to- he can grasp it, and _tear-_

He’s tugged backwards, and there’s a glimpse of blue and black before he’s not looking at the dumpy brown buildings of Hawkins Middle, he’s looking at the dumpy brown buildings of a small school in a small town in the north of Minnesota.

Home?

The word leaves a funny taste in his mouth. 

The question he’s left with, as he considers returning to detention and instead decides to face the long walk home, is _what the fuck just happened._ Is he going crazy? Is he the one they should cart off to the _loony bin,_ as Darren calls it? Or maybe, just maybe, is he like El?

He can see the strange snowflakes of the Upside Down swirling in the corners of his eyes. So much for escaping his problems.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Good day at school?” 

Lucas grunts in response to his mom’s friendly voice as he closes the front door behind him and sighs. His every muscle is aching. Coach Jefferson is working them harder than ever for the big game on Sunday; he only hopes he doesn’t let them all down.

“Hey, don’t go all moody adolescent on me, young man.” She comes into view with her hands on her hips, eyebrows arched. “How was your day?”

“Good,” he huffs. “I’m just tired after practice, okay?”

She holds her hands up in surrender. “Okay.” She lets him pass her and he goes up to his room without another word, every step an effort. He dumps his bag on the floor and slumps face-first on his bed with a groan.

“Tough day?”

Erica’s snide voice drifts over him and he groans again, louder, but it’s muffled by the duvet. “Go away, Erica.”

“You look like a dried-up starfish.”

It’s weird enough that he wrinkles his nose and sits up to glare at her. “I said, _go. Away._ ”

Instead of arguing with him, as she usually does, she just looks at him quietly and he sighs. She’s not in the mood to fight, he sees - neither is he. But she’s not leaving, either. She wants to talk.

“Don’t you wanna hear about our newest campaign? I’d have thought you wanted to, seeing as you’re a _nerd._ ” She smirks at him and plants herself at the foot of his bed without asking for permission. 

He rolls his eyes and scoots back so he can lean against the headboard. “Go on then. Shoot.”

“Well, basically we have a problem. Our party is perfect right now, we got a ranger, a cleric, a druid, and a rogue. I’m the rogue. But now Sandy wants to join our party as well but her ideas for her character are _so boring_ and she’s gonna ruin the whole set-up unless I can fix her character sheet.” She produces said sheet from behind her back with a flourish. “She wants to be a bard, but she’s so unimaginative…”

He takes the sheet from her and scans it, and can feel his weariness melting away despite himself. Because yeah, he’s not a kid anymore, none of them are, but he misses this. Poring over character sheets and handbooks, defeating troglodytes in dank chambers constructed by nothing but Mike’s voice. It’s easy to lose himself in it as he gives Erica advice and ideas, points out spots that don’t work, suggests a way to make it more creative. He’s been bitter about Erica getting into DnD, that’s true. But sometimes- it’s nice.

“Thanks,” she says, finally, when the character sheet looks a little less faulty. “ _Nerd.”_

He grins at her. “You still haven’t given that up? We all know you’re a nerd too.”

She just laughs at him and leaves. He smiles after her, because she just says it out of fondness now, he knows. Like a term of endearment. They’re closer now than they were before. It’s down to the Upside Down thing, really. This little (massive) secret they share that they can’t tell anyone, not even their parents, not even their friends. Lucas is lucky the party knows - though their friendship is on rocky ground, now. He bites back a sting of regret.

And, as if on cue, his supercomm crackles to life.

It’s sitting under his bed, permanently on, in case of a panicked _red alert_ that will bring him running. He hasn’t touched it in weeks, except to change the batteries when it was getting low. (Call him paranoid, sure.)

He lies on his bed and listens.

“Lucas. Lucas, pick up. I know you’re home. Pick up. I need to talk to you.” It’s Mike. Of course it’s fucking Mike. “Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas-”

He rolls his eyes so hard it hurts and grabs the radio from under his bed, his good mood evaporating. “What do you want, Mike? If this isn’t a code red then I’m taking the batteries out-”

It’s an empty threat, but Mike doesn’t know that. (Mike doesn’t know how paranoid he’s gotten.)

“Don’t! I just- I found something weird, alright? I found something weird in the woods and Dustin won’t pick up, so.”

“What was it?” he asks, sitting up straighter. There’s something in Mike’s tone, something tremulous and _scared._ Lucas resists the urge to reach for the army knife he keeps in his bedside drawer.

“This- cave. Out between Will’s old house and Steve’s house. I was sure I’d never seen it before so I got some old maps of Hawkins from my dad’s study and I was right, there’s no record of it at all. And it’s not, like, hidden. It’s obvious.”

“Is that it?” He raises an eyebrow. “A cave. I mean, it’s not exactly the gates of hell, is it?”

Mike is quiet. “You weren’t there. It was- it felt like it was looking at me.” This last bit is barely a whisper and despite himself a shudder runs down Lucas’ spine. “It was weird, Lucas. I think something’s going on. And the thing with Nancy-”

“What thing with Nancy?” He sharpens.

“Nothing. Just- we were both so freaked out-”

“We?”

Now the silence is guilty. “Me and Max.”

All at once the tension drops, to be replaced with annoyance. “Okay, so while hanging out with my ex-girlfriend you saw something weird and you thought I should know about it. Gotcha.”

“Lucas-”

He rolls his eyes again. “Mike, you saw a cave that you thought was looking at you. Like, you do realise how that sounds? We’re all on edge, okay? But Hawkins is safe right now. Just… start coming to class again, maybe? Instead of skipping with my ex-girlfriend.”

Calling her his _ex-girlfriend_ helps. It’s been made pretty clear that _just friends_ doesn’t work, although he was willing to try. He kept on staring at her long, pretty hair, her soft lips, and she noticed and got mad and he retreated and got defensive. So, _ex-girlfriend_ it is. 

“Lucas-”

“Over and out.” He slides the aerial down and reflects for a moment, just a moment, that he’s not the only one who’s changed. Mike doesn’t insist on saying “Over” after every sentence, not anymore. He kind of misses it.

“Lucas!” His mom’s voice is muffled from downstairs, and with a huff he chucks the supercomm back under his bed and goes to the top of the stairs.

“Yeah?”

“Phone call for you.” She’s holding out the phone with a glint in her eye. He hurries downstairs and takes it from her with a suspicious look, but she just smiles vaguely. 

“This is Lucas.”

“Sinclair! Your mom sounds nice.” It’s Jackson, his voice loud and brash over the phone and so, so different to Mike’s. “You comin’ to the party tonight?”

“Party?” He frowns as he tries to recall if he’s been invited to a party, and comes up empty. It’s the kind of thing he’d remember, he thinks. He’s not been _cool_ for very long.

“Yeah, Angelo’s party! The whole team will be there. _And_ Linda will be there.”

“...Linda?”

“Yeah, y’know, the sophomore who’s always watching our games? Long blonde hair? She’s hot. And I heard she’s been mentioning your name.”

Vaguely, he recalls a flash of blonde hair and flirtatious gray eyes, but he can’t say he’s ever paid her that much attention. (He’s been too busy thinking about someone else, his mind supplies, and he pushes the thought away angrily.) “Awesome, yeah, I’ll be there.”

“We’ll pick you up. You live down Maple, right?”

“Right.”

“See you at nine,” Jackson says. There’s a grin in his voice. When he’s hung up Lucas tries to sort through his weird mire of feelings and doesn’t really succeed - because this is a good thing, right? Being invited to a party by a junior. Having a sophomore crushing on him. Doing what - as all reports would suggest - is the normal thing for teenagers to do. He’s finally getting on with his life as he should be. He’s moving up in the world.

So why does it feel weird? 

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

_We think he’s alive_.

The words are still echoing around Joyce’s head, even ten minutes after Owens spoke them. She’s still blank, shaken. There’s no way. There’s no fucking way. But Owens isn’t Murray, that’s for sure. The man is a cynic - of course he is, he’s a scientist - so for him to even entertain this-

It might even be true, and that scares her more than she can admit. The idea that she’s- that she’s just been living her life, all this time, trying to move on, taking medication because not only did it lessen the panic attacks but it also helped her forget. The idea that she’s been going to work, that the kids have been going to school, like everything’s normal, when Hopper might be-

Hopper might be-

In _Russia_ -

The gun, something she’d bought several months ago in a fit of protective fury and then regretted as soon as she brought it home, because sure she knew how to use it and Nancy had given her extra help before they left Hawkins but it was a _gun_ and the thought that she might use it was terrifying, lies discarded on the sticky booth seat beside her. She has her hands twisted in her lap.

“Joyce-” Owens says, leaning forward with his hands on the table. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She looks at him with an unfocused gaze. Hopper is in Russia, he’s saying. He must have somehow jumped through the gate right before it closed, he’s saying, which isn’t unreasonable because they flagged a strange flare of radiation on their systems right before it closed, he’s saying. The gate must have led him to another gate in Russia, he’s saying. And then she blinks.

“Another gate.” Her voice is dry and thin, like she hasn’t used it in a while. “You’re saying there’s another gate. In _Russia._ ”

“That’s about the size of it, yes,” Murray drawls. 

Owens barely glances at him. “We believe so. In fact, we only found the Chief because of the gate. The higher-ups, y’know, wanted us to keep an eye on… _this side of things_ over in the USSR.”

“You mean spying.” Murray, as always, is blunt.

“Among other things. We hit the jackpot with the prison in Kamchatka. We put an agent in there and lo and behold, we found the Chief too.” 

Her mind is only just catching up with her ears. “And are you gonna get him out? You’re gonna rescue him, right? You’re not- you’re not just gonna _leave_ him there-“

“Well, that’s the thing. Our guy went silent the other day and it’s not looking good, which means we gotta send a team in. And this team has to be prepared for whatever it may face over there.”

Murray is rolling his eyes. “Cut to the chase, Dr. Evil.” When Owens doesn’t say anything, Murray looks her deep in the eyes. “He wants us to go to Russia.”

Her mouth hangs open soundlessly. For a long moment she’s incapable of speech, because- because- “Russia. You want _me_ to go to _Soviet Russia._ ” She looks at Owens a little desperately, like he might scoff and say _of course not, you’re a struggling single mom with anxiety issues who works in a diner, there’s no way we’d send_ you _to_ Russia _._ But it doesn’t come. 

He just sighs. “Joyce, except Hopper you’re the only person alive who’s familiar with the Nether and also not under twenty-one. You’ve been there. You faced the- I believe you call it the demagorgon.”

“The demogorgon,” she corrects without thinking- and then meets his eyes sharply. “What’s that got to do with this? They- you don’t think-“

“Unfortunately, we do.”

 _No._ A gate is one thing, a gate is- is an awful thing, but another _demogorgon-_ Somehow that’s scarier to her than any of the rest. That bulbous head without a face, those hundreds and thousands of teeth when it opened up like a bloody, gaping flower-

Maybe it’s because the rest of it is in the abstract for her. The Mind Flayer is just a shadow, the product of her son’s black crayon. The monster it became in the summer she never even saw, not once. But the demogorgon- and the smaller ones, the demodogs, the ones that killed Bob-

“We go to Russia, we somehow get into this prison- and then what. We rescue Hopper? We- what, we kill the demogorgon? We close the gate?”

Owens nods. “That’s the plan.”

She scoffs, shaking her head in disbelief. She looks at Murray, as if to say _can you believe this?_ He just looks back at her, a bitter smile playing on his face, as if to say _why are you even surprised anymore._ But the question is, this time and every time, can she trust them? Can she trust Owens’ seemingly benign smile? He’s no Martin Brenner but he’s _dangerous_ , she can’t forget that.

“My kids-” she says, weakly, trying to give herself time to think.

“-will be fine. Jonathan’s eighteen now, isn’t he?” Not quite, but she can tell Owens knows this. He has files on all of them, she’s sure. She also doesn’t like him lying to her. “My people will keep an eye.”

Oh, she’s sure they will. That makes her less keen to go. That makes her want to stay in her house with her children and never let them go, so the government can never hurt them ever again. But then she studies Owens’ face and sees something that wasn’t there before. A thin, almost invisible line of uncertainty. _They’re not watching us_ , she realises. They had to put a trace on Murray’s phone to contact her, they had to meet her at a diner in the next county for god’s sake. They don’t know where she lives.

And if there’s a chance-

Just a _chance_ -

That Hopper is still out there- 

She has to take it. She _has to take it._ For him, and for herself, and for El. If there’s a chance that that wonderful girl could have a future with her father (blood is irrelevant), then she has to take it. She’d be wrong not to take it.

For the first time in months her head feels clear. She’s thinking clearly and there’s a blossom of hope trembling in her chest. 

“Okay,” she says.

Owens looks faintly astounded, before he masks it under a placid smile. Murray cracks a grin. “What did I tell you? Joyce Byers is no shrinking violet.” He claps his hands together. “Let’s go to Mother Russia.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“What the shit are you wearing, Henderson? What is this?” 

Dustin blinks at her with an offended look. “What do you mean, what is this? This is my sneaking outfit, okay? What the- what the shit are _you_ wearing, Buckley?”

Robin looks at him, unimpressed, over the rim of her invisible glasses. He’s in brown pants, a black top and jacket, and has a black baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. All he’s missing is the balaclava. “You know, the brown really ruins this whole ensemble.”

He sighs. “I don’t own any black pants, okay? Now can we please get on?”

She rolls her eyes and turns to look at the fence looming dark up ahead of them. Now that she’s here, she really doesn’t want to be. She knows it’s empty, knows they’ll meet nothing but dust and no one but spiders, but there are ghosts here too. Stories she’s only heard of that she doesn’t like to think of as real, not really. She knows her government is fucked up but she doesn’t want it spelled out in front of her.

He snaps his fingers in front of her eyes and she blinks. “Hel-lo, earth to Robin? Let’s go?”

“Let’s go,” she repeats, and follows him through the ragged hole in the fence that looks like it’s been there years. There are climbing plants winding their way around the chainlink, nature slowly reclaiming the site of its perversion. Robin shivers.

“Did you bring the bolt-cutters?” he asks, as they approach the main entrance. 

“Yes, I brought the bolt-cutters.” She moves to get them out - filched from her dad’s shed, not like he ever has cause to use them - but then she frowns. “Look.” She indicates the lock, already broken. The chain already on the ground.

“That-” Dustin’s voice has climbed in pitch. “That could’ve been like that for ages, right?”

“Right. I mean, what kind of coincidence would that be? Someone _else_ decides to break into the defunct top secret lab like they _also_ have a death-wish.”

“Hey, you agreed.”

She agreed because she knew he’d go anyway without her, and she feels like it’s her job to babysit these stupid kids these days. (Stupid being a loose, fond term. She likes it really - but she definitely does not get paid enough for this bullshit.) “Yeah, I did, shitbird, so let’s just get this over with.” She steps over the broken lock with a great deal more confidence than she feels.

It doesn’t feel as haunted inside as she’d have thought. It’s just cold, and empty, and has that faintly musty smell of abandonment and decay. She shines her flashlight around the foyer and finds nothing, no one, nothing. No Americans, no Russians, no demogorgons. It’s empty.

“Alright, where are we supposed to look?”

“Mr Clarke said air ducts and in the ceiling, so how about you take the top floor and I take the bottom, and we’ll meet in the-”

“Absolutely not. We are not splitting up. Have you, like, ever seen any horror movie ever? That’s the worst thing we could do.” She fixes him with an adamant stare. It’s not fucking happening.

“They’re just movies. And yes, actually, I have. I saw _Alien._ ”

She throws her hands up and the beam of her flashlight dances across the wall. “You had your eyes closed the entire time! You, like, definitely pissed yourself. And anyway if you supposedly watched _Alien_ you’d know that splitting up is what got everyone who’s not Ripley killed. _Life imitates art,_ Henderson.”

“Pretty sure the demogorgon hasn’t seen _Alien_ ,” he mutters, but he’s relenting. As he should, because she’s right. She’s not gonna be another horror movie statistic, no sir. Not to-fucking-day.

“Okay, let’s start on the top floor and work our way down. _Together_.” She gives him a nervous, slightly hysterical grin as she leads the way to what she guesses is a stairwell. Sure enough, it opens out into a towering well of stairs, all brown, all cold, all utterly identical. With a sigh she begins the climb - it’s going to be a long night.

The lab is shaped like a cross and is built with absolutely no sense of military precision. Corridors lead to dead ends and doors go nowhere. The door she’s confident leads to an observation room, since it’s directly adjacent to a dark, sparse interview room, leads instead to a bathroom. All on one corridor there are hospital rooms and conference rooms and small, dank rooms she’s pretty sure have seen a lot of pain, without rhyme or reason or any sense of logic. 

“It’s meant to be confusing,” Dustin says, as if reading her thoughts, as they’re exiting yet another empty, useless storage room. “The layout. So intruders don’t know where to go, and prisoners can’t get out.”

Typical America, prioritizing hostility over effectiveness. She rolls her eyes as she gives the foam board ceiling a cursory scan with her flashlight. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, just as she thought. She really wasn’t expecting them to have left anything, and it looks like she’s right.

“Help me up.” She turns to see Dustin scrambling in vain for another air duct high in the wall. She raises an eyebrow and steps over to him, hoists him up by the waist with an ease that surprises her.

“You’re pretty light, you know that.”

“Maybe you’re just strong. Don’t you play soccer?”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Can you see anything?”

He kicks out vainly and she ducks to avoid his flailing feet. “I can’t- I just need to-” 

Inch by inch he disappears into the duct, until his entire upper body is inside. She looks around nervously at the darkened walls, the corridor stretching black away from them. He’s silent and for a moment she wonders if he’s encountered something horrible. Something black and slimy and crawling. She’s reminded of Dallas crawling through the ducts, the radio going dead. Maybe Dustin was right to be scared of _Alien._

“I got it!” His voice is muffled but full of triumph and she swings the flashlight back around to shine on him. He shimmies clumsily back and crashes into her with an _oof_ that knocks the breath out of her for a moment, before righting himself and presenting a shoebox to her with glee.

“A shoebox?” She raises an eyebrow, though inwardly she’s crowing. They found something, they really fucking found something. Maybe this wasn’t a waste of time after all. “Why would the CIA hide something in a shoebox?”

“It’s not the CIA, Robin, it’s the Department of Energy. And maybe they didn’t want it to be found. Maybe this isn’t official, maybe- maybe it’s, like, some secret agent working inside-”

“Okay, slow down. How about we get the hell out of here and then open it, yeah? This place is giving me the creeps.” She looks at him meaningfully, because she knows he’s a little freaked out too, despite the current excitement on his face. He has more of a right to be, anyway. She’s faced all this once. This is his third time - or maybe he’s used to it. Maybe it’s practice. 

Then-

There’s a sound. Why the _fuck_ is there a sound? This place is empty. It’s fucking empty, they know this, they’ve practically combed every inch of it. And yet there’s a sound - a quiet sound, a gentle creak, like a door being opened and closed. 

Robin’s every muscle tenses all at once and she sees Dustin swallow and take a step back. Not practiced enough, then. Automatically she reaches out and grabs a fistful of his jacket, dragging him back behind her. He may be more experienced than her but he’s still a kid, and she does soccer. She can kick someone in the dick if necessary.

She doesn’t know what she’s expecting. Some military guy ten feet tall with a gun the size of a plane tree, maybe. Some scientist, sinister in a white coat. What she’s not expecting is this.

There’s nothing there, not for a long moment. The door at the end of the corridor swings back and forth, gentler each time, until it slides to a stop. She can feel Dustin staring behind her, and he says, “That’s some Eleven shit right there-”

The air _ripples._ There’s a blur of movement and Robin whips around to see-

Dustin with a knife to his throat. Dustin with a knife to his throat that’s held by a girl shorter than him, a girl with dark skin and dark hair and clothes in all black that actually look like she’s comfortable wearing them. Her eyes are feral and there’s blood on her upper lip.

“Dustin-” Robin lets out. Her voice is strangled and she takes a step forward; the girl drags Dustin a step back. 

“What do you know about Jane?” she hisses. Dustin swallows visibly and his adam’s apple bobs against the blade.

“I don’t-”

“You do. You know her. How? Where is she?”

Robin is lost, quite frankly, but there’s a dawning significance in Dustin’s eyes that makes her think he knows what’s going on. She only got the abridged version of the story, to be fair. _Eleven_ is really just a number to her, _Jane_ a bunch of letters on a briefly glimpsed birth certificate. 

“She’s not here. But I’m her friend. We’re her friends- we can help you-”

“Help me?” The girl scoffs. “Why would I need help?”

“Because you’re another number.” Robin winces at his boldness, and notices out of the corner of her eye that he’s crossed his fingers by his side. The knife doesn’t waver and for a second - just a second, but it feels like eternity - she thinks the girl will drive it home. But she doesn’t. She removes it with blinding speed and shoves Dustin away from her, hard. He crashes into Robin’s arms and she holds him tight with relief. 

Then the girl extends her wrist and wrenches up her sleeve. _008._ He was right, which she can’t quite believe - not out of a lack of faith in Dustin, but a general scepticism that any of this is real. Sure, El threw a car with her mind, but that happened once. She can ignore that. This-

“Your turn,” the girl says, eyeing them both, still wary, still wild. “Who are you?”

“I’m Dustin Hender-”

“This is Dustin, and I’m Robin,” she cuts him off with a glare. Is he really that stupid? It’s like when Steve gave the Russians Dustin’s full name and address, only at least he was on drugs at the time. Dustin doesn’t have the same excuse. “We’re friends with your sister.” Dustin is. It’s a moot point.

“She told you about me?”

“Not in so many words,” he says, stepping out of the protective circle of Robin’s arms. “But generally people who aren’t related to El in some way can’t turn invisible at will.”

“You’re a child,” the girl returns. “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here? And what even is your name? Unless you want us to call you Eight, which is-”

“You are very annoying.” Her voice doesn’t sound threatening, to Robin’s relief. Just irritated, perhaps mildly bored. “It’s Kali. My name.”

It’s a nice name. Fitting, too, if Robin’s sketchy knowledge of Hinduism is anything to go by. A warrior, a freedom fighter, a destroyer of evil. She looks like she could destroy pretty much anything, if she wanted to, despite her small height. Almost unconsciously Robin finds herself looking her up and down again, more in appraisal this time. _This is not the time to be a useless dyke_ , a little voice in her head says, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Carol, but she can’t help it. Well, shit. Kali’s hot.

“We’re looking for you, actually,” she blurts out, and now it’s Dustin staring at her with annoyance. Now who’s tipping their hand, his eyes say, and she just looks blankly back, words tripping off her tongue like she can’t help it. “Dustin thought maybe there would be something left here about the other numbers-”

“Why?” Kali’s gaze is sharp. “Why would you want to find us?”

To be perfectly honest, Robin doesn’t know. She doesn’t have a clue. She’s just along for the ride. Funny how all her adventures - misadventures, probably - start out because she’s fucking _bored._ She should get a hobby. Maybe knitting.

Dustin’s gone silent too, and it occurs to her that he doesn’t know either. It’s general dissatisfaction with life, in her opinion - it’s going to school and learning algebra while knowing there are _things_ out there that don’t care if you know what x is, because they have gaping mouths that yawn open without lips and they’re _hungry._ It’s being unable to move on when everyone else seems to be perfectly happy to do so. 

Maybe she doesn’t blame him.

Finally, he speaks. “Uh… I thought you could help. In case it happens again.”

“What happens?”

“The Ups-” he starts, but then he catches himself. His eyes meet Robin’s and they’re cautious, and not for the first time she feels like he’s babysitting her. “If the Lab people come back.”

Luckily, Kali doesn’t seem to have caught his slip. Her fists clench and her face tightens at the mention. “Papa…” Her eyes have gone distant, like she’s forgotten they’re here. “You asked why I’m here. I’m here to protect Jane from him.” 

“But-” Dustin has turned pale in the gloom. “He’s dead.”

That’s right. The demogorgon, or whatever - it got him, isn’t that what they said? In the middle school science corridor, no less. The same corridor Robin walked down oh so many times, to-ing and fro-ing and trying really hard not to get kicked in the shins by Tommy H. 

“No, he’s not.” 

Kali’s voice is so quietly certain it sends a cold drip of fear down Robin’s spine. She swallows and looks at Dustin, who just looks back at her with helpless confusion. 

“How do you know?” he asks, but Kali shakes her head.

“Enough questions. Where is Jane?”

“She’s not here,” Robin offers, and tries to make it sound friendly. She’s not so sure it works, because Kali looks at her with eyes like chips of ice. “I mean- in Hawkins. She’s not here anymore. They moved.”

“‘They’? Her and the policeman?”

She shuts her mouth. That- well. She never knew the Chief all that well but she experienced enough of the others’ grief secondhand to feel a touch of it anyway. Dustin’s gone quiet too, and someone has to answer, so, “He died. Hopper- the Chief. Last summer. She lives with another family, they know all about what happened, they moved in October.”

“Moved where?”

Robin starts to answer, then frowns. She looks at Dustin. His face is curiously blank- because surely he’d know? El and Will are some of his closest friends. Party members, and all that. Surely he’d know.

But apparently he doesn’t, because he opens his mouth and nothing comes out. She thinks, thinks hard, but the name of the town, the name of the county - they’re hidden in fog. She must have known at one point, right? Someone must have mentioned it, once. The best she can come up with - “Minnesota.” She feels strangely tired. “Somewhere in Minnesota, I- I don’t know where.”

“You don’t know?” Kali raises an eyebrow. “Minnesota’s a big place. You never wanted to visit?”

“Yeah, but-” Dustin’s floundering for an answer. He doesn’t seem to have one. “Mike or Max would know. We can ask them-”

“Wait. How do we know you’re not after her- how do we know you’re not working with the government?”

Kali’s smouldering gaze (smouldering, Jesus, so now she’s writing corny love poetry in her head) is so disdainful she feels foolish. “Trust me or don’t, but I would rather die than work with them again. I just want to protect Jane.”

Robin and Dustin share a long look. Do they trust her? If they do, they’ll be leading her straight to El (if they can remember where she is, that is). That could end badly - but Robin doesn’t know. There’s something about her, something she’s inclined to believe. And anyway, they could keep her around for a bit, maybe learn something. Dustin wanted to find the numbers, after all. Here’s one on a silver platter. 

He nods, and she nods back. Okay. “Okay,” Dustin says. “We’ll trust you. But you’re coming back with us. A fair information exchange.”

Kali raises her eyebrows as Robin looks her up and down one more time. This would be so much easier if she wasn’t so attractive- “What do you want to know?”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

** Saturday, January 18th, 1986 **

    _It used to be a fairly reliable rule of American middle-class life that a son could be expected to try hard, with his own life, to make some of his disappointed mother’s dreams come true._
    _This may no longer be the case. Things change._

Jonathan stares at the passage of the book, well-worn and bracketed off in faded ballpoint. He circled it in a fit of anger six months ago when his mom told him they were leaving Hawkins; he was reading this, _Palm Sunday_ by Vonnegut, and the passage had jumped out to him like it was lit up in red lights. He’d thrown the book in one of his boxes when they’d moved and it had stayed there in the only box he hasn’t opened in the corner of his room ever since - that is, until they fought the other night.

Then he dug it out and he’s been staring at the passage on and off ever since, unable to get it out of his head. His family isn’t middle-class, he knows this much. But still. _A son could be expected to try hard with his own life_ \- is that a good thing? _Try hard with his own life_ , that’s positive, but _expected to?_ Expectations, from Jonathan’s point of view, only ever lead to disappointment. And _disappointed mother_ , like it’s inevitable, like this is all set in stone, like this isn’t what she might have wanted out of life (though he knows it isn’t. Joyce puts on a good show but he knows they could do better than this. He knows she could do better). 

Should he be trying? Is that what he should do with his life? Do what his mother wanted to do and never could?

(He knows some of it. He doesn’t know all of it. And she won’t tell him, she won’t, because clearly she’s never read this passage of Vonnegut and she doesn’t _understand_ that maybe it’s his job to do what she couldn’t.)

He stares at it for a moment longer - _This may no longer be the case. Things change._ \- and then closes the book. He drops it on the pile beside his bed and rubs his eyes, before looking at the clock. 08:43. It’s a Saturday, so he doesn’t have to get up yet, but he should. He should make breakfast.

His gaze moves past the clock to the wall, to the photos and postcards pinned up there. Artwork, his own photography, and a polaroid Nancy sent him of her and Steve on her first day of senior year. Steve is leaning against his car, an awkward hand behind his neck, looking less the preppy high school king than ever, while Nancy is smiling with her books clutched to her chest beside him. _We both miss you_ , reads Nancy’s delicate scrawl underneath. It makes him feel weird, in ways he can’t explain. _We both miss you._ It’s not jealousy, that he knows. Jealousy is an old friend of his, from way back when when it was Steve making out with Nancy by her locker before first period. Now they don’t make out, and it feels even weirder.

Not jealous. Just weird.

When he’s brushed his teeth and put some pants on he goes out to the kitchen. Will is sitting at the table already with a comic open in front of him, but Jonathan can tell he’s not really reading it. He’s deep in his own head. “Hey,” Jonathan says, as he starts making coffee. 

“Hey,” Will says, cautiously. 

Jonathan decides just to launch straight into it. Rip the band-aid off, so to speak. “So, you got detention, huh?”

His face closes off. It’s more than guilt, or shame, or defiance. It’s like he’s _scared._ Jonathan tenses. “Yeah, I did,” Will says. His voice is quiet.

“El says you hit someone. Because of her. Is that what happened?” There’s a long silence. Jonathan rounds the table and looks at him head-on, but his gaze has gone all distant like he’s not even listening. “Will?”

Will starts. “What?”

“I asked-”

“Oh, good, Jonathan, Will, you’re up, where’s El?” Their mom breezes into the kitchen with that same flood of nervous energy and Will is saved from answering, for now. Jonathan leans back against the counter and looks at her. She’s pulled her hair up out of her face and she looks tense, nervous, but there’s something in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Some fiery resolve. Hope, even, and that’s what makes him sure she’s been lying. 

Last night over dinner she’d looked at them apologetically and told them she has to go away for a night, to Minneapolis, because there was some legal issue about her aunt (long dead)’s estate. It’s a four hour drive, so the overnight trip makes sense, but the rest of it doesn’t. Darlene died when Jonathan was nine. It’s only because she lived in Minnesota that she’s a convenient excuse. But when Jonathan had probed for the truth - because he knows she doesn’t like lying to him, he _knows_ it, and usually she caves - he’d been met with a brick wall. Joyce is only good at lying when it really matters. The trivial stuff she’s hopeless at, but the real shit- 

Well, it’s less that she’s a good liar and more that she’s immovable. You can tell she’s lying - at least, Jonathan can - but there’s no hope of getting anywhere near the truth. And it was the same last night. His mom just pinched her lips together and sat back, her lasagne congealing on her plate. _I want to tell you, sweetie, I do, but I can’t._ He _hates_ it when she does this.

“She was still asleep when I got up,” Will says, tonelessly. 

“When are you going?” Jonathan asks, moving to finish the coffee. “You want some?”

She shakes her head. “Soon. Ten minutes or so. I just- I wanna say goodbye to El.” 

There’s something heavy in that. Her words are loaded and he feels himself tensing with suspicion. But he’s not gonna get anything from her, that much is clear. She fidgets in the doorway for a few minutes before turning- “I’m gonna-” just as El emerges, blinking sleepily. “Hey, sweetie.”

“Hi,” El says uncertainly, looking past her to Jonathan. Somehow, without any thought at all, he’s become her first port of call in the family. He kind of likes that. “Is there breakfast?”

“Coming right up,” he says. “You want Eggos?” 

She nods, a smile growing on her face. Then Joyce touches her arm and he pretends to look away, though his eyes don’t leave the two of them. Something’s definitely up. Joyce looks at El for a long, silent moment, then, “El, I-” and more silence. “I’ll be back tomorrow evening, okay?” Joyce says, finally, and it’s clearly addressed to all of them, though her eyes stay locked with El’s. “Be good for your brother. I’ll try to call tonight but if I can’t-” She swallows visibly. “If I can’t, and you have a problem, then you can go to Mrs. Jacobs next door, I told her I’m gonna be away.”

She slings the strap of her bag over her shoulder and kisses first El then Will on the cheek; she says “Be safe,” and her voice trembles slightly. Then she turns to Jonathan, and he bites his lip. “Look after them,” she says. “ _And_ yourself.”

“I will,” he promises. He leans down to let him kiss her but then she hugs him instead, holding him close and tight. He hugs her back, a little surprised, a little relieved. His suspicion begins to melt away - not entirely, but into something a little less harsh. He’s worried, now, rather than pissed off. “Mom,” he says, when she’s moved away and is nearly at the door. “Be safe?”

There’s more in it than _drive carefully._ They both know that. But she just nods with a small, nervous smile, and leaves.

Jonathan sets about distracting himself by making breakfast. The Eggos are in the toaster and he’s got his hands wrapped around his coffee when El speaks, a frown on her face. “Something’s wrong.”

Her tone is grave. “What do you mean?” Jonathan asks, slowly. 

“With Joyce. Something-” She shakes her head. “Something’s not right.”

“Y’know, Murray wouldn’t stop phoning yesterday.” 

They both turn to look at Will, still sitting at the table, still pretending to read his comic book. “ _What?”_ Fury floods Jonathan’s veins. Murray has been a persistent thorn in their sides for a while but if he’s done something to upset their mom- 

Will shrugs. “She told him to stop calling, but I don’t think he did. And then last night she was- different.”

Jonathan runs a nervous hand through his hair. Then he goes to the phone and dials the voicemail, because if Mom wanted him to stop calling then she probably didn’t pick up at least once, which means he probably left a message…

He hopes, anyway. This is his only chance of working out what’s going on, short of going through her room. He’d rather not do that. He waits for a moment, listens to a message from the water company (late payments; he flinches) and one from the school calling _to discuss recent behavioural problems in your son, Will Horowitz_ (he sends a suspicious, fraught glance over his shoulder at Will, sitting there innocent and silent). Then Murray’s voice crackles onto the phone line and he tenses. He was right.

_“Joyce, c’mon, pick up the goddamn phone will you? This is important. Look, I can’t- I can’t tell you over the phone. They’re listening. The goddamn- they’re probably watching you right now. And not who you think. Not Sam. It’s um- it’s Arnie. Arnold. Y’know? Fuck, I just- Call me. We found him. Call me.”_

He replays the message, staring into the middle distance as he tries desperately to wrap his head around it. What does it mean? Who’s listening? Who is ‘Sam’, and who is ‘Arnie’? He puts the phone back on its hook and pinches the bridge of his nose. _We found him._ Found who? It sends a chill down his spine and he doesn’t know why.

“What is it?” El asks. He looks up. She’s stepped closer to him, face uncertain. 

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” After only a brief moment of hesitation, he thinks _fuck it_ : “Do you wanna have a listen? I can’t make sense of it but maybe… I don’t know.” She nods and he passes her the phone.

They stand in silence for a few minutes as she listens, and then she lowers the phone. “Where is Annie’s Diner?”

He frowns. “What?”

“Annie’s Diner. The man on the phone, in the second message-”

Shit. He’s an idiot. He grabs the phone back and listens: _“I know you don’t wanna hear it. I know. But you have to. This- this’ll change everything, Joyce, trust me. Please trust me. I know you’re not gonna call me back but we- meet us? Please? We’re at Annie’s Diner all day, you can find it in the phonebook. Joyce, just- please- Trust me.”_

He listens for a while longer, determined not to make the same mistake again, but there’s no more messages. He puts the phone back on the hook and bites his lip, trying to think. The logical place to start is the diner Murray mentioned, of course. But going there would mean leaving Will and El here alone, or worse, taking them with him when it could be dangerous…

He turns to find El already poring over the phonebook, her finger tracing over the numbers with avid concentration. Then suddenly she grins. “Annie’s Diner! I found it! It’s only in the next county. Let’s go.”

“El…”

She glares at him. “I’m not staying here while you go. This is important.”

“You know she’ll get a bus and go on her own if you don’t take her,” Will says, mildly. Jonathan glares at him, but he knows he’s right. El is no stranger to doing things her own way. And if she did that - got on a bus going god knows where, completely alone - his mom would kill him. She’s a chill mom about most things, but not about that.

He takes a deep breath. “Fine. Will-”

“I, um, I was gonna meet Ryan today.” Will shifts in his seat and Jonathan sighs internally. Great. Now his brother is lying to him too. “If that’s okay?”

Jonathan looks at him for a long moment. This isn’t Hawkins, and it’s not like he’s helpless. He isn’t a five year old. So he nods. “Yeah, okay. But be back for dinner, okay? I’m gonna order in.”

Both of them light up at that. He gets El to eat her Eggos before they go, although she’s thrumming with anticipation. He can’t deny that he is too. It feels proactive, a step forward. In the car he puts on Siouxsie and the Banshees, because he knows El likes them too, and sure enough she smiles at him and nods her head along. Outside the snowy trees rush past and beyond them, every so often, he gets a glimpse of Lake Superior, huge and cold and gray. Then, after about an hour, he turns off and drives inland under El’s direction, the heavy roadmap they bought when they moved here clutched in her lap. They find Annie’s Diner twenty minutes down the road, a grotty little place with blue tables and a chequered floor. They look at each other for a moment, hesitating, before they go inside. He’s not sure what they’ll find.

Not much, is the answer. It’s just a diner. There are a couple of customers strewn across the tables, hunched over food that looks greasy and unappetising. The smell of frying oil mixes with that of soapy vinegar to make his stomach turn; when he looks over, he sees a waitress mopping the linoleum floor. 

El is looking around with her nose wrinkled and there’s disappointment on her face. He isn’t sure what they expected, honestly. If it was just a meeting - a meeting his mom might not have even turned up to - there wouldn’t be any sign now. 

“You want anything? Hot cocoa or something?” he asks her. After all, they drove all the way out here. They may as well stay for a bit.

She nods. “Cocoa is good.”

He watches her find a booth and then he goes to the counter and orders her cocoa and a coffee for himself. When he returns she’s still scanning the room, a frown on her face. He follows the direction of her gaze. Her eyes are on the waitress mopping the floor. 

“You should talk to her,” El says, and for a bizarre moment it sounds like she’s setting him up. He nearly chokes on his coffee. “She might know something.”

He looks at her reluctantly. The waitress looks tired and depressed, about his age, her blonde hair in a knot at her nape, her blue smock creased. Then she notices him looking and gives him a small, flirtatious smile. He looks away so fast he nearly gets whiplash and runs a hand through his hair. He really does _not_ wanna talk to her. He doesn’t like other people at the best of times, and when they’re _flirting_ with him…

But then, as it often does, the phrase _what would Nancy do_ flashes across his mind. It’s true, he asks himself that quite a lot. Not because she always does the right thing - sometimes she gets it very, very wrong - but because he thinks so differently to her. His mind is on defence, always defence, and she’s on the attack. What would Nancy do? She’d go up to that waitress without a second thought and get the truth, whatever it may be. Even if it’s that his mom didn’t come here at all.

He takes a deep breath and goes over to her. She’s still smiling, straightening up and leaning on her mop. She’s wearing yellow rubber gloves. 

“Hey,” he says, ducking his head and semi-consciously trying to hide behind his hair. “I- um- This is gonna sound weird.”

“That’s okay,” she says, stripping off her gloves and chucking them on the empty table behind her. “I work in a roadside diner. Trust me, I know weird.”

He swallows. “Were you working yesterday?”

She nods, eyebrows creasing together. “Why?”

“Did anything… weird happen? Like, anything out of the ordinary?”

She laughs. “I told you, there is no ordinary.” She eyes him for a moment, a hand going up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “But maybe there was something weird.”

“Maybe?” He’s beginning to get desperate. Her face is coy. 

“Well, I can’t _really_ tell you. They made me sign something.”

His stomach drops. He remembers back in ‘83, and ‘84, and ‘85, when each time the government people came up with documents and documents, _Non-Disclosure Agreements_ , sign or else, don’t tell or else. Clearly she recognises the shift on his face, because the coy smile drops. He swallows. “You- I need you to tell me what happened. Please.”

She looks hesitant now. “I don’t-”

_“Please.”_

She glances around furtively and tugs him into the booth behind her, before facing him and whispering: “Okay. _Hypothetically._ So _hypothetically_ , if I was working here yesterday afternoon and I saw something weird, then _hypothetically_ I could tell you about it.” She leans closer and it doesn’t feel like she’s flirting, not anymore. She’s scared of being overheard. “Hypothetically, I might have been told to close the diner. And hypothetically, two men sat in that booth over there-” she nods her head towards a table in the corner “-and hypothetically, a woman came in pointing a handgun at them.”

He stares at her. “What did she look like?” His voice, too, is low.

“Uh, long brown hair, she was maybe five foot one? Five foot two? Shorter than me but not that much shorter. Big eyes, cheekbones like razors, I mean I’d _kill_ for cheekbones that high, but she was middle aged. Maybe forty? Little bit of Shelley Duvall about her, y’know?”

Yeah, that’s his mom. (Though he’s not sure he agrees about Shelley Duvall.) “And she had a gun?” Logically, he knows his mom has a gun. She’s been very open about it, and even more so about her hesitation to get it at all. This had been in Hawkins, when dangers lurked around every fucking corner, so it made sense. It was more practical than Lonnie’s old shotgun. (Though they all know how to use that too.) But now-

And even so-

His mom with a gun. The image just doesn’t make sense in his head. His mom with a gun pointed at _Murray_ , most likely, and yeah the asshole makes it easy to want to shoot him but surely she’d never try? 

The waitress nods. “She had it pointed at them for about five minutes - _hypothetically_ \- but then I figure they won her over, because she put it down. She looked pretty stunned, actually. Like they’d told her she’d won the lottery, or that- I don’t know, that up was down. I don’t know, it was- it was weird. Not happy, exactly, just- stunned. Like she’d seen a ghost. Like-”

“Like she’d seen someone come back from the dead,” he suggests, but it’s a monotone whisper. His mind is working overtime and there’s a horrible, impossible suspicion in his gut. No. No way. But maybe- _We found him. This’ll change everything._ Maybe, just maybe-

“Yeah,” the waitress says. “Like that. Then hypothetically they might have talked for a while longer, and then the woman left, and that’s when I had to sign all that shit.”

“What did they look like? The two men?”

“One was kind of- jolly uncle, y’know? Trying to be all friendly, but you could tell he’s a hardass underneath. Gray hair, kinda short and a little bit stout. The other one was twitchy. So bald you could see your face in it, black beard, glasses. The first guy was definitely in charge.”

Owens and Murray. He’d put money on it. “Did they say anything else?”

She shakes her head. “No, not really. Though-” She frowns. “The bald guy was humming this song. It got stuck in my head all day. I can’t remember what it’s called and it’s driving me insane.” She hums a tune and he struggles to place it. He recognises it, that’s for sure. But he doesn’t know how. 

He shakes his head. “Sorry. Look, you’ve been really helpful, thank you.”

“Hey, I’m happy to help. Fuck the government, right? Reagan’s a dickwad. Hypothetically.” She grins.

He smiles back, a little uneasily. His mind is a million miles away, dwelling on Owens and Murray and his mom and whatever the fuck she’s mixed up in. Jesus. He’d thought- they’d all thought- that by coming all the way here, all the way up to snowy Minnesota, they’d be safe. They’d be away from all that. But apparently not.

When he returns to El’s booth she’s looking at him with those big, knowing eyes. “Joyce was here.”

He nods. “Yeah, she was. I think- I think we might have a problem.” He doesn’t mention his creeping, unlikely suspicions. El’s been through enough. He doesn’t need to raise the impossible possibility that maybe-

Just maybe-

It’s unthinkable. Isn’t it? Joyce watched him die. Didn’t she? It’s too ridiculous to consider.

But so are monsters coming out of walls and portals to other dimensions. Nothing is too ridiculous, not anymore. And it’s the only real explanation he’s found for the newfound resolve in his mom’s eyes, the way she lied without breaking a sweat. The trembling emotion in her face when she looked at El this morning. It’s unthinkable. But he’s thinking it anyway.

“We need to call Hawkins,” he says instead. Just in case. 

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Okay, who the hell is this?” 

Max glares as she stares at the figures on her porch. Lucky her stepdad’s out, she thinks, because there’d be hell to pay at the sight. Dustin and Robin, mostly fine. The other girl? Less so. She’s short and brown-skinned and looks really pissed off.

“This is Kali,” Dustin says with a smile. “Max, meet Kali, Kali, meet Max. Can we come in?”

He pushes past her before she can say no and plants himself on the couch. Robin follows him, and Kali gives her a look through narrowed eyes before joining them. Max sighs and goes to stand by the TV, arms folded over her chest. “Can someone explain, please? What are you doing here?”

“Maybe it’s a social call,” Robin quips. Max glares at her.

“Where did Will and El move to?” Dustin asks, leaning forward. 

Max stares at him, then at Kali, who’s standing closest to the door with an intent expression, like she’s desperate to hear the answer. “Don’t you know?” Max asks, looking back at Dustin.

“No. We got as far as Minnesota, but…”

She frowns. Minnesota, yeah. It was definitely Minnesota. In the north… She remembers, because when Joyce had told El the name of the town they’d looked it up on a map and wondered at how distant it seemed, how far away from everything. How bleak and cold. But that name-

Somehow it’s slipped out of her head.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly. Because she doesn’t. 

Dustin stares at her, eyes wide. “You don’t? But El’s your best friend.”

She rolls her eyes. “You think I don’t know that? I just- I can’t remember. Why do you want it, anyway?”

“I need to find her.” This is the first Kali has spoken; Max’s eyes flicker over to her. Her voice is firm, faintly accented. “She is my sister.”

“Whoa, _what?”_

Dustin is nodding. “Yeah, we _know._ Crazy, right? But she’s another number. And she needs to find El.”

She finds herself staring at Kali, wondering what she can do. Because she has to have powers, right? If there are other numbers then El can’t be the only one with powers. Can she? “Well, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can try and find her address but…”

“Isn’t that a little weird?” Robin says, from her place on the couch. “I mean, that none of us know where they went.”

“Yes,” Kali says. Her eyes are on Robin and Robin’s cheeks have gone pink. “It is weird.”

“We could check if Mrs. Byers left a forwarding address. You know, for mail and stuff.” 

Dustin clicks his fingers. “Yes! Let’s do that. Kali, you stay here with Max, Robin and I will go to their old house and then if that doesn’t work the records office. That’s where it’d be, right?”

All three of them shrug. Max thinks about his words, thinks about the Byers’ old house, and then she has to say something - “Dustin-”

“No, stay here with Kali. It’s risky for her to be seen in public.”

“That’s not what I was gonna say,” she retorts, crossing her arms. (Though it does rankle that she’s been given babysitting duty, even if the ‘baby’ in question is five feet of punk rock rage.) “I was _gonna_ tell you to be careful.”

“Be careful? Why?” Robin’s voice has an edge to it.

Max casts about for the words, but she doesn’t know how to describe it. Something in the woods chasing them that they never saw- a cave that shouldn’t be there- None of it makes sense. It sounds like paranoia. It’s just a feeling, really. A bad feeling. “I don’t know, it’s just- Mike and me went over there a few days ago and it… felt weird.”

“It ‘felt weird’? It’s just a house, right?” Robin looks like there’s a joke she isn’t in on. Max wishes it was funny.

“Actually, intuition is based on micro perceptions picked up by our subconscious and is a valid form of observation-”

“Okay, Sherlock.” Robin ruffles his hair and Max’s chest hurts at the sight. (Billy never ruffled her hair, or teased her in a nice way, but now she wants it more than ever.) “Let’s go. We’ll be careful.”

And then they leave, and Max is left with Kali, staring each other down over the sofa. “You want, um, coffee?” Max tries. She just gets another suspicious look. “Okay, well, I’m gonna make some coffee.”

For some reason Kali follows her into the kitchen. She stands by the table with her arms crossed over her chest, watching Max boil the water and spoon out coffee grounds. It’s a strange sight, her tattered all black against the gingham tablecloth Max’s mom put out that morning. Months ago she would have swallowed a wry smile at the thought of Neil’s reaction – now it makes her tremble.

Lucky they’re out for the day.

“You want milk?”

Kali shakes her head. “Do you have sugar?”

Well, there’s a surprise. Max hands her her coffee and the sugar bowl, and watches wide-eyed as she stirs in two heaped spoonfuls. Then the silence stretches thin and begins to get unbearable. Finally Max breaks. “So. You’re a number.”

With another wary look, Kali sets her coffee down and tugs up her sleeve. Without thinking Max gasps and steps forward to look. Kali flinches and Max looks at her apologetically, before her eyes are drawn back down to the bare skin of her arm. Because holy shit, she really is another number. _008._ How cool is that?

“Whoa,” she mumbles. Kali tugs her sleeve back down and crosses her arms. “So what can you do?”

“You’re a friend of Jane’s?”

 _Jane._ Huh. “Yes.”

“Then-” Kali starts, but she’s cut off by the shrill sound of the phone ringing. Max glares at it like she can make it stop ringing (who knows, maybe Kali could) but after a few moments, when it becomes clear the caller isn’t gonna give up, she sighs and goes over to it. 

“Hello?”

“Max?”

The tension goes out of her. El’s voice is soft and for a moment - just a moment - it’s like all the hundreds of miles between them are erased. “Hey, El.” She turns to look at Kali, who has gone rigid, eyes wide. Max gestures to the phone but she shakes her head - which is weird. Surely this is what she wanted? The chance to talk to El?

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Max says, still distracted, still staring at Kali. Why the hell won’t she take the phone? It’s not that Max doesn’t want to talk to El - she does. But the girl standing five foot tall in her kitchen is a problem, one that she’d like to solve before Neil comes home. “Are you okay? How’s Minnesota?” It occurs to her then that she should ask the name of the town, the name of the county. Here’s an opportunity handed to her on a silver platter - it’s strange it never occurred to any of them to simply _call._ The words are on the tip of her tongue but before she can get them out El is speaking over her.

“It’s okay. Max, is there anything… weird happening? In Hawkins?”

She falls silent. Why is she asking that? Why… She thinks about the lights flickering on at the Byers’ old house, the cave sucking the daylight in, Nancy’s terrified eyes as she yelled at them to _Run!_ And Kali, watching her wordlessly, the tattoo on her arm. It’s weird, sure, and it’s only Kali’s warning gaze that’s preventing her telling El _hey your freaky sister’s here_ , but maybe it’s not that kind of weird. Because there are different kinds of weird, now. There’s _a cave not on the map_ weird and then there’s _a tear in the universe_ weird. They’re not at Defcon 1 just yet.

And El is far, far away, and she couldn’t help even if she was here, even if something was going on. 

“No, everything’s okay. Why? Is something happening?”

There’s a hesitation, then: “No. I just wanted to check. Um, I have to go. I miss you.”

“I miss you too-” But the phone has gone dead. Max stares at it in frustration, then rounds on Kali. “Why wouldn’t you talk to her? You want to check on her, right? You could’ve just asked her!”

Kali shakes her head. “I have no doubt that they’re listening.”

“ _They?_ Who is _they?_ ” 

She just shakes her head again. “I need to see her. I need to speak to her face to face.”

And great, Max forgot to ask the name of the town. She dials again but it just rings out, no answer. El is gone. Shit. “I mean, I have the area code, but that’s not gonna get us very far. Minnesota is big.”

“When your friends return-” Kali starts, but then she stops and cocks her head, listening. Max listens too, and her stomach drops. Keys in the door. _Neil._

She doesn’t have time to think. She grabs Kali’s wrist and drags her out the back door, diving for the cover of the steps. Her breathing has gone erratic and her heart is pounding because if Neil finds her here with Kali- 

(It turns out Billy got his shitty racism from his dad. There’s a reason she never brought Lucas home.)

“What is it?” Kali hisses, tugging her wrist back from Max’s grasp, though she doesn’t move out of their hiding place. 

“My stepdad,” she whispers, trying to will herself calm. He won’t find them, he won’t find them, he won’t find them…

The back door opens above them and she jolts at the sound. It has creaky hinges; he’s always talking about oiling them but he never does. Then it’s his footsteps, heavy and steady, one after the other down the steps. Any second now he’ll turn around and find them crouched here and then her life really will be unlivable. (She hasn’t got Steve to defend her now, nor a spiked baseball bat to threaten him with.) 

She hears his footsteps as he turns around, and she squeezes her eyes shut. Kali has gone tense and still beside her. Any second now his shout will come crashing through the air towards her - _Maxine!_ \- and she braces herself for impact.

Impact never comes.

She thinks she’s imagining it when she hears his footsteps retreating again. She can hardly believe it - but true enough, the screen door opens and shuts above them and the yard is silent once more. Hesitantly, still cringing from a half-expected blow, she opens her eyes. 

Kali has stood up out of the shadow of the steps, and there’s a small, bitter smile on her face. She offers Max a hand. Max considers the empty yard and the dusty crawlspace in front of her, before taking the offer and pulling herself to her feet. “What happened?” she asks, feeling blank and confused.

“You’re friends with Jane, so you must know what this means.” Kali wipes her nose and shows her her hand. There’s blood on it. “You didn’t want him to see us. So I didn’t let him see us.”

Max stares at her. Holy shit. Holy _shit._ “Thanks.”

Kali’s gaze doesn’t waver. “That man - he hurts you?”

Max looks away, defensiveness rising inside her. That’s not- he doesn’t- what does Kali know? She scuffs her shoe in the dirt and tries to ignore the burning sensation of the other girl’s eyes on her. It’s almost _embarrassing._

Finally: “He does not make you weak.” Kali’s voice is hard, the most passionate Max has heard it all day. “And he will pay for what he does.”

Max’s eyes flicker up to meet hers, startled. Kali looks deadly serious, and Max has no doubt that if Max wanted her to she would take a knife from the kitchen drawer and stab him on the linoleum. But she doesn’t want that. (Not all the time, anyway.)

It’s nice to hear it, though.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Steve! Would you get the door, please?”

His dad’s yell is loud, even through the wall, even over the sound of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers roaring in Steve’s ears from his walkman. He rolls his eyes and gets up from his position on the couch, dragging his headphones down to his neck. It’s probably, hopefully, the pizza he ordered. (He can’t stand the usually salmon-flavored canapes his mother considers dinner.) But when he opens it, he’s disappointed. And pissed off.

It’s Nancy.

“Hi,” she says, and tries to step over the threshold, like everything’s normal. Like she didn’t break into his house a few days ago and steal some shit that his dad is clearly _really_ fucking worried about, because he hasn’t gone to a motel once since then. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” he hisses, taking her by the arm and tugging her back outside. “You can’t be here.”

Her face is serious. “I need to talk to you.”

He sighs and rubs his forehead with his thumb. “Seriously? I’ve got a pizza on the way so unless the world is about to end-”

“ _Steve._ ” She widens her eyes at him, like she’s hinting something, and the proverbial penny drops. Oh, for fuck’s sake-

He walks over to his car and opens the passenger door. “Get in. We can’t talk here.”

Her shoulders droop with something that’s probably relief. She really didn’t expect him to say yes, he thinks. He feels a savage stab of satisfaction, followed by a rush of sadness - satisfaction at being unpredictable, _better_ than she thought he was, but sadness that she doesn’t know him like that, inside out, like she used to. Or maybe she never did. 

He drives them about two blocks away, then parks up and waits. She’s looking around with a lost expression - and suddenly he realises. This is where Barb parked, the night-

The night it all started, for them. For the Byers it started earlier but for Nancy and Steve- it was right here, when Barb put her car in park. When Steve, like an idiot, gave her a knife to shotgun her beer, and Barb, like an idiot, sliced her thumb open instead. (Barb wasn’t an idiot. Steve was just cruel.) 

Finally, Nancy speaks. “I had to sneak out. I’m grounded.”

He stares at her. “Nancy Wheeler? Grounded?”

She flushes. “Don’t do that. Don’t make fun of me. I was doing what I thought was right-”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘course you were. ‘Cause that’s what you always do, isn’t it, Nance? What you think is right. Fuck everyone else-”

“Does your dad know it was me?” There’s a challenge in her eyes. For the first time he sees the murky bruise on her temple, and his anger fades just a little, replaced by concern. 

He shakes his head.

“Exactly. And does he suspect you?”

Steve just sighs. He doesn’t know. He never really knows what his dad is thinking, not really, not exactly. He could suspect Steve or he could trust him wholeheartedly - it’s anyone’s guess.

“I’m sorry I did something you didn’t want me to-”

The anger’s back. “It’s not about what _I_ wanted, Nancy! It’s not about me-”

“Just _look_.” Her voice is forceful enough that he stops, and just looks. She’s holding papers in her hand, papers with **CLASSIFIED** stamped over the top, and underneath that DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY. The papers she stole from his dad’s office. He swallows. “I found something. There wasn’t much there, he can’t be keeping everything at home, but there was _something._ ”

She tries to press the papers into his hand. He doesn’t want to take them, at first. His fingers refuse to uncurl. But with an effort he makes himself hold them, and look at them, and read about the awful shit his dad’s involved in. The first page is title deeds, land ownership, boring stuff. He wouldn’t spare it a glance, except when he scans it the first name he sees is his own.

    _`Property in the name of: STEVEN JAMES HARRINGTON`_

“What the fuck,” he says, voice barely a whisper. “What- I’ve never seen this shit in my life, surely I’d have had to sign it-”

Nancy’s finger points to spot below it. “Look.”

 _`Signed on behalf by Legal Guardian: JOHN EDWARD HARRINGTON`_ , with his dad’s illegible scrawl of a signature at the bottom. And it’s dated 1974. In 1974 Steve was seven, nearly eight. His stomach drops to his toes. “Holy shit.”

“This is in _your_ name, Steve. Whatever he’s doing- I think he wants you to have a part of it.”

“I don’t want a part of it, Jesus. Holy _fuck._ And what is _it_ , anyway?” He flips through the pages, eyes wide, but there’s nothing there. Nothing telling. Just a street in a county in Minnesota. Meaningless shit about planning permission that tells him nothing except that what they were building was _big_. Big, like another Key, or another Hawkins Lab-

His stomach drops out. And this is in _his_ name. He can’t let this happen, he can’t- It being his dad, his _dad_ , is bad enough. But it’s his own name on the deeds; hell, it’s probably his own name on a plaque on the door for all he fucking knows. He has to stop whatever the hell this is. “We have to go here, Nance.” His voice is urgent, and now it’s him doing the pushing, him barrelling along. He taps the address on the paper so hard it flops in his hand. “We have to see what he’s doing there.”

She’s looking at him, wide-eyed. Her cheeks are flushed with something like adrenaline but he can’t even focus on how beautiful she is, not right now. His nerves are thrumming with tension, and _anger._ God, he’s angry. “Look at the last page,” she whispers.

Slowly, afraid of what he might find, he flips to the last page. It’s a field of redacted names, with only initials remaining, and slowly, inevitably, she touches her finger to one particular name. 

    `Dr. M█████ B██████`

“That’s gotta be him,” she whispers. “Brenner. Which means-”

“We have to go there. We have to drive up to Minnesota and find out what the fuck they’re up to- what Brenner’s up to- my _dad_ -”

Her gaze is intense. “What about your dad? Won’t he question it if you’re gone for a few days?”

He shakes his head. “He’s all tangled up in this legal shit right now. He won’t notice.”

She frowns, her eyebrows doing that adorable thing where they slope upwards and crease in the middle, her eyes softening in the same expression she always gets when he talks about his dad. He doesn’t like the pity. It’s just how it is. “What’s it about?” she asks, “The legal trouble?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t really know, but he knows it’s not all that unusual. His dad’s a dick in business. People feel fucked over and try to sue. It’s even more obvious now that he knows what his dad _really_ does. Who he _really_ works for. “It’s not a big deal. Just a smaller company trying to sue my dad’s company, he said. They probably won’t win.”

“Okay. So- we’re really doing this?” He loves that there’s no question of _we._ He _loves_ it. “I’ll leave my mom a note.”

“She won’t worry?”

“Oh, she will. But I’ll call her- I mean, we’ll have to stop off on the way, right? So I can call her from a motel or gas station or something. She’ll be mad for a bit but this is- this important.”

He sighs. The papers crinkle in his hands, and this trip feels like a chasm gaping before him. A void. A precipice waiting for his leap. If he wanted-

If he wanted, he could slide the papers back into his dad’s filing cabinet. He could forget all about it, go on climbing the ladder at his dad’s company. Be Mr. Harrington the second, C.E.O., businessman doing nefarious things, building shady shit seven hundred miles north. Be his dad. 

But he’s not his dad. And he doesn’t want to do that. He _really_ doesn’t want that. He wants to be better, even if better doesn’t mean Ivy League or yuppie-ness. Better means setting the world to rights - or on fire - with Nancy by his side.

“Let’s do this.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits: [oh i wept](https://open.spotify.com/track/6U4bZFS1R9NpBljsq1hQde?si=363xAK3VQzeRCist7HOxfg) by free 
> 
> as always, let me know what you think and find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/joycefinkels) \+ [tumblr](https://palmviolet.tumblr.com/)


	3. No Place Like Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will deals with last night’s consequences. Steve and Nancy drive north in search of answers.

“I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled  
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,  
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,  
its own ways of making people disappear.”  
– Adrienne Rich, _What Kind of Times Are These_ (1995)

“Everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled,  
the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted  
slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.”  
– Franny Choi, _the world keeps ending, and the world goes on_ (2019)

** Saturday, January 18th, 1986 **

Somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota

When Jonathan and El have left for the diner, Will sits there in the kitchen for a long time. His head feels stuffy, full of cotton. His mouth is dry. He lied about meeting Ryan today; he simply couldn’t endure a long car journey with El and Jonathan both looking at him like he’s hiding something, like his skin’s gone transparent and they can see the bones underneath.

After a while he forces himself to get to his feet, and he looks out the window. It’s cold and bright outside, the sunshine glaring off last night’s freshly fallen snow. The sky is a rich, heavy blue. 

For once it looks inviting, and the house feels small and stifling. He finds his boots (bought secondhand when they realised that Minnesota winters were nothing to sniff at) and laces them up, shrugs on his coat. He briefly considers phoning Ryan for real, spending hours talking about meaningless shit, maybe going to the arcade with him, since his mom’s not here to stop him. But something holds him back.

(Tony’s lips- That swirl of darkness and then the glowing Hawkins sky-)

He cycles out of town, up to the cliffs that are apparently a big tourist spot in the summer. Now they’re cold and empty, dead, with a quiet wind buffeting over them. The lake is massive and dark. He stands at the edge and contemplates it silently, the far-off horizons concealing the distant shores of Michigan, Wisconsin, Canada. Coming up here always reminds him of his own insignificance. He feels so small and the world feels so, so big. And Hawkins feels very far away indeed.

But maybe it’s not.

He can still feel that energy thrumming around him, barely there but present somehow. He can feel the inky coldness of the Upside Down lingering under the surface of the world, and somehow he knows that beyond that is Hawkins, or Michigan, or Canada, or _anywhere._

If he was to jump, he’d land somewhere else.

It’s magnetic, almost. The desire to do it again. The desire to reach through- to _pull_ -

He’s not brave enough to jump. But as he turns away from the water he closes his eyes, lets the vertigo swallow him up, and opens them on another snowy ridge. There’s still a lake beneath him, but it’s inky black under heavy thunderclouds. When he looks around, his bike is nowhere to be seen; neither is the warning declaring _Steep Drop: Beware_. Instead there’s a small bronze sign dusted in snow: _Pukaskwa National Park._

Canada. He’s in Canada.

He still hasn’t proven that he’s not going completely insane but if he’s not, then-

His nose is running. He wipes at it with the back of his hand and it’s with a feeling of detached amazement that he recognises it as blood. El, he thinks. He feels like El. What would she say, if she knew? Would she be jealous?

Maybe, he thinks. She hates being powerless, unable to defend herself and them like she wants to. He knows this. He also knows that she’s a good person. That maybe she’d be happy for him - or scared for him, because this is scary. What does it mean?

Is there some fragment of the Mind Flayer left in him?

 _Yes,_ he thinks. He knows that much. It’s why last summer he was their early warning system, their canary in the coal mine. Is this part of that? Or is it something new?

He thinks about the Upside Down, when he found himself in it during that awful assembly. The clear starless sky, the way the Mind Flayer felt distant, barely-there. And the _Eye._ The visions - people dancing, a car in the snow, a white lighthouse-

Oh. _Oh._

With a strange jolt of effort he brings himself back to the bluff over the lake from Minnesota’s side. (Home?) Then he climbs the slope to the very top of the cliffs, looking out over the town and its harbor. It looks so small from up here. So irrelevant. He focuses his gaze on the harbor, the boats, the rocks of the cliffs on its other side - and there. 

The lighthouse.

Everything inside him _sinks._ It feels like a bad omen, for some reason. He doesn’t know why it should - it’s just a lighthouse, and he’s seen it before, surely that’s why his mind came up with it - but it does. It stands there in the middle of the waves like a sentry, guarding the town from the open water. Tall and white and skeletal. Struts that look like bones. The same as the one he saw in the _visions._

He tears his eyes away and wipes at his nose, which is bleeding again. He doesn’t want to be up here anymore, with nothing between him and the endless sky. He feels flattened beneath the weight of it.

When he cycles home the driveway is still empty. He sits at the kitchen table and does his math homework with as much diligence as he can manage, while his thoughts spin out of control. His nose bleeds intermittently; he creates a pile of half-used, red-stained tissues.

Sometime after lunch, when it’s begun to snow again, Jonathan and El return. They look pissed off - pissed off and confused. “We got lost,” El says, by way of explanation, when he looks at them questioningly. 

Jonathan is shaking his head. “It was so weird, it was- I missed the turning three times. Three times! I don’t understand it.”

Will shrugs, covertly sweeping the stained tissues into the trash. “And the diner?”

“Mom was there. So were Owens and Murray.”

He frowns. That- that can’t be a coincidence. His mom meets with Owens the day before he discovers he can take himself places in the blink of an eye? It’s weird. (He _hates_ weird.) El is looking studiously away from him and he remembers that she’s still mad. He resists the urge to roll his eyes - he clearly has bigger problems than that - and just frowns into the distance. 

Jonathan runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Okay, well, my car was making a weird noise earlier so I’m gonna go check on that, since if it breaks down then we’re stuck here.” All three of them shiver at the thought. And then he goes back outside, and El and Will are left facing each other over the table in silence. She’s crossed her arms and the harsh line of her jaw looks strangely like his mom’s when she’s angry. 

El might be jealous. El might understand.

It’s a leap of faith.

Will stands up. “Can I talk to you? In our room?”

She looks at him suspiciously. “Why?”

He sighs. “Please?”

With another suspicious look she follows him down the hallway into their room, because he’s not sure he wants Jonathan to know just yet. _If it breaks down then we’re stuck here._ Jonathan has enough to worry about. Will sits down on his bed and motions for El to do the same; stubbornly she remains standing. 

“Look,” he says finally, “I’m sorry. I know- I know it wasn’t my problem to solve, but I was just _so mad-_ ”

This isn’t getting him anywhere. Her face is blank like stone. She’s very good at that, he’s realised. Icing people out. Her long silences after Hopper’s death, caused then by grief, are now something she carries with her as a weapon, to be brandished when necessary. It’s frustrating. It makes her stick out, among the Byers. (Horowitzes.) His mom and Jonathan are both very good at heart-to-hearts; Will is receptive to them, El is sometimes not. The Byers - Horowitzes, now - are used to talking about their problems. El is used to solving them with a flick of her head.

He takes a deep breath. He’s gonna tell her. He has to tell her. (But she’s already mad at him-!)

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

The phone rings out for what feels like the millionth time, and still there’s no answer. Steve drops the payphone back in its cradle and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s called all the numbers he can think of - her house, the video store, even her friends from band and soccer - and there’s no response. Wherever she is, he can’t reach her.

“No joy?” Nancy asks, as he exits the booth with shoulders drooping.

He shakes his head. “I don’t wanna just- I feel like it’s a bad idea to leave town without letting Robin know. Y’know?”

She nods, understandingly. She’s very good at that, the understanding nod. _I get it. I understand it. Let me fix it for you._ That’s also where she’s less good - obsessively fixing problems. It’s an addiction of hers. “We can call her when we get to Chicago? I’m gonna call my mom then anyway.”

He bites his lip. “Yeah, I guess, it’s just-” He looks beyond her, at the quiet evening street, the scant pedestrians talking and laughing with each other. It looks so peaceful tonight. Tonight, it looks like the suburban idyll it tries to sell itself as, to those Easterners too chicken to commit to moving all the way West but still in search of the ‘rural’ experience. But it’s also been branded ‘Hell on Earth’ and quite honestly? Steve’s inclined to agree with that last bit. “What if something happens?”

“You mean-”

He nods, and looks around again furtively. Force of habit. “Yeah. Now that Hopper’s gone-” he flinches to say it “-and Mrs Byers and Jonathan have moved away, we’re the only adults who _know_. Us and Robin. If something happens-”

“The kids aren’t helpless, Steve. And Robin can look after herself.” There’s something weird in her tone. The corners of her mouth have turned down, like they always do when Robin is mentioned. She doesn’t _like_ Robin, he’s realised. The knowledge forms a twisted knot of unhappiness in his gut. “C’mon, it’s three hours to Chicago and at this rate it’ll be midnight before we get there.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He sighs again and runs a hand through his hair. “Alright, let’s go.”

Her frown vanishes, and her face settles into the expression it’s most comfortable wearing - determined. She opens the passenger door of his car but before she can get in there’s a shout: “Nancy!”

They both turn to see Mike cycling towards them like he’s being chased by the hounds of hell (or as they’re known in Hawkins, demodogs). His face is flushed and when he stops in front of them and dismounts his bike, Steve sees that he’s panting with exertion. “Don’t go without me.”

“Mike-”

Steve rounds on Nancy. “What the hell did you tell him?”

She opens and closes her mouth. “I just- you wanted to tell Robin!”

He deflates. He supposes he did. He fixes Mike with a glare. “There’s no way you’re coming with us. You have school on Monday.”

“So does Nancy!” Somehow the kid’s cheeks flush even redder with indignation. “You’re going to Minnesota, right? That’s where El and Will moved to. You’re not visiting them and leaving me behind!”

Steve and Nancy share a glance. Visiting the Byers isn’t really a part of the plan, though if their house turns out to be anywhere near this _place_ that has his name on it then there’s no way they won’t. “It’s not about visiting them, Mike. It isn’t a social call.”

From the way Mike is looking at him Steve can tell she’s told him pretty much everything. But still, he’s got his arms folded stubbornly over his chest. Oh, to be a teenager in love. “Sorry, Wheeler. It might be dangerous. And I’m pretty sure your mom would _freak_ if two of her three children went missing at once.”

Mike raises his eyebrows dubiously and Steve decides to cut off that train of reasoning right now, because it’s clearly not gonna get him anywhere. (Who’s he kidding? The parents argument would never work on him either.) 

Then Nancy starts in. “Listen, Mike, you can’t come. My attendance is good enough to miss school. If yours gets any worse they’ll make you repeat the grade.”

 _“What?”_ He’s gone pale. 

“Yeah, I heard mom and dad talking about it.”

“Trust me, freshman year is bad enough if you have to do it once.” Steve joins in, and feels a little guilty at the way Mike has drooped. “But listen, all that aside, you’re one of, what, six? left in Hawkins who knows about everything. We need you to stay here so you can deal with it if shit hits the fan.”

Nancy is nodding and there’s a tiny bit of hope in the kid’s eyes now. “Really?”

“Yeah. If something happens you call the Byers, okay? And you listen to Robin.” Steve glances at her in surprise, but it passes quickly. Nancy is practical. Of course she’s gonna shove personal feelings aside when danger strikes. 

“We’re trusting you to keep an eye on everything, okay? You see anything weird, you call someone. You don’t investigate on your own.”

He gets the sense that Mike isn’t really listening to this part. He can only hope that nothing happens. “We’ll call whenever we can.”

“Okay,” Mike says slowly. “If you see El, tell her…”

Steve nods. “You got it.”

Then he and Nancy get in his car and they drive off into the dark, Mike’s image shrinking in the rearview mirror until it disappears in the closing dusk.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

     _Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up_  
_In the morning when the day is new?_

Karen hums along to the record as she rolls out pastry on the countertop. It’s one of her old favorites from her post-high school days, when instead of going to college like so many of the smart girls from her boarding school she came back to Hawkins and married someone rich, because her daddy’s money was running out.

She casts a disdainful glance back at the living room, where Holly is playing with a doll on the carpet in front of Ted, who’s snoring in his La-Z-Boy. She got the money she wanted, sure, the ideal little life she wanted at the end of the cul-de-sac. Three kids, the third one an attempt at fixing things the last time it looked like they were falling apart. She’s not doing that again. 

     _We could be married (we could be married)_  
_And then we'd be happy (and then we'd be happy)_  
_Oh, wouldn't it be nice?_

Wouldn’t it be nice indeed, she thinks, as she takes a sip of her glass of wine. She places the rolled pastry in the pie mold and weighs it down with a string of pie-weights to blind bake it, before sliding it into the oven. Then she turns her attention to the filling: coconut and custard. It’s all the rage, apparently. Ted hates coconut.

When she’s done mixing the ingredients together into a kind of gloopy cream she dusts her hands off on her apron and goes to the bottom of the stairs: “Nancy! Mike! I’m baking! Do you want to lick the bowl?”

No response. She sighs. “Anyone?”

The silence is deafening. Come to think of it, she definitely saw Mike leaving the house, but Nancy’s meant to be here. She’s _grounded_ , for god’s sake. Suspicions mounting, Karen climbs the stairs and knocks on her elder daughter’s door. As she expected, there’s no response. The door is locked. 

She feels less bad about picking the lock this time. Any guilt she might have felt vanishes completely when she spots the envelope on Nancy’s bed, _Mom_ written on it in Nancy’s careful cursive. Her stomach drops to her toes.

She sinks onto the bed, her hand, still faintly dusted with flour, coming up to cover her mouth as she reads it. Oh god.

    _Mom,_
    _When you read this I’ll be gone. Okay, that sounds pretty final, it’s not like I won’t be back. I’m driving up to Minnesota with Steve. There’s something we have to do. I’m not going to say it’s not serious, because it is. We wouldn’t be going otherwise. But I’m safe, and I’m fine. I am not running away. I’ll try to call from the motel tonight, but if I don’t then don’t panic. I’m fine. I’ll be back soon._
     _Love,_  
_Nancy x_

Oh _god._ The repeated assurances that she’s _fine_ , everything’s _fine_ , aren’t filling her with confidence, because a teenage girl’s definition of ‘fine’ is very different to what ‘fine’ actually is. Her first instinct is to call the police, because the last time a teenage girl ‘ran away’ she was killed and the government covered it up. But Barbara Holland didn’t leave a note.

Heart in her throat, Karen stands up and slides her hand under the mattress - but the notebook is gone. Her only clue. What the hell is Nancy involved in? And _Steve?_

Last she checked, Steve was settling down, working for his dad… and he’s always been the most normal of anyone her kids associate with. Hasn’t he? His dad is respectable, his mom too. ( _Not like Joyce Byers_ , a treacherous part of her thinks, and stubbornly she presses it down. It was the old Karen, the Karen who had another kid for the sake of her marriage, who looked down on Joyce with well-meaning concern, a little bit of disapproval. She’s not that Karen anymore.)

Still-

They moved up to Minnesota, the Byers did. Is that where Nancy’s gone? To visit her boyfriend? (So why is Steve going too-)

She’s reading the letter again, her thumb creasing the corner with nervous energy, when she hears the doorbell ring. She stays where she is, hoping that whoever it is will go away, or else Ted will wake up and answer it - she’s granted neither. After the caller persists for over two minutes she huffs and slides the letter into the pocket of her apron, and goes downstairs ready to give whoever it is a rather large piece of her mind, because it’s nine o’clock for god’s sake-

But when she opens the door, no words come out.

“Hey, Mrs. Wheeler,” Lonnie Byers says, with a smile that looks more than a little deranged.

She stares at him for a long time. He’s swaying on his feet and is that _blood_ on his face? “Lonnie,” she says, tightly. “What are you doing here?”

His brow knits. He looks mildly desperate. “I’m looking for Joyce. You haven’t seen her, have you? I need to talk to her-”

“They moved away.”

His face turns ugly. “What? Where the hell did she go?”

Karen doesn’t miss the way he only says ‘she’, instead of ‘they’. He’s after Joyce, not his sons. Clearly he doesn’t care about them. It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him, but instead she shakes her head. “Far away. Look, it’s late. We can talk tomorrow, if you want-”

“ _I saw something.”_

Slowly her gaze moves back up to meet his. His eyes are wide, wild. Even afraid. “What?”

“I don’t-” He laughs bitterly and rubs the back of his neck, before leaning on his other hand against the doorframe. Intentional or not, it stakes a claim. He’s not leaving anytime soon. “It’s crazy, it’s… it’s fucking insane, which is why I need to talk to my wife-”

“She’s not your wife anymore, Lonnie,” she reminds him. Her voice has an edge to it that she didn’t expect.

His face twists. “No, but her kids are my kids and we have- I can’t believe she didn’t _tell me_ they were moving- _bitch-”_

“I’d like you to leave,” she says, crossing her arms.

“Tell me where she went. Please? Karen, you don’t understand, I _saw_ something at our old house-”

“Lonnie?” For once, she’s relieved to hear Ted’s voice. She turns to see him coming to stand behind her, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What’re you doing here?”

Lonnie gives her another desperate look, but his face is defeated. “Oh, just looking for my family.”

“Huh. Didn’t they move up to Minnesota?”

For god’s sake, Ted.

Lonnie’s eyes have brightened. “Did they? Do you have an address?”

“Um… Karen, do we have an address?”

She clenches her jaw and gives them both a false smile. “No, I don’t think we do. Sorry.”

“Oh. Sorry, Lonnie. How about we catch up while you’re in town? Go for a beer or something tomorrow, how about that?” 

Lonnie gives him a smile - more like a grimace - over Karen’s head. “Sorry, I’m not staying long. Gotta find Joyce, y’know?” He gives them both a mocking salute before walking off unsteadily down the street. Karen watches him go with her arms crossed, unease pricking at her. _I saw something at our old house._

She stands there for another moment, as Ted returns to his position in front of the TV. The coconut custard pie is waiting for her - but she doesn’t want to go back to it. Weird things are happening in Hawkins again and this time - _this time_ \- she’s at the heart of it. This time, maybe she can find out what’s going on.

She’s taken her apron off and has her coat on before she can talk herself out of it. She’s only had one glass of wine, so she’s good to drive, and she doesn’t stop to tell Ted where she’s going. He probably wouldn’t care.

And then she’s driving off down the street towards the Byers’ old house.

It looks the same as ever, if a little less chaotic. No laundry hung up out the front - though you’d be a fool to expect laundry to dry in a snowstorm. Joyce’s haphazard collection of garden furniture is gone. And the strangest sight of all, though the one she should have most expected, is the absence of the tiny green Pinto in the driveway.

They really are gone. Somehow it didn’t sink in before now.

She gets out of her car and stands there a moment as the snow drifts down around her. The house is dark: no lights on, no car. No one home. What could Lonnie have seen? There’s nothing weird here. It doesn’t feel uneasy, just… lonely. Empty and cold.

There’s no point in ringing the doorbell if no one’s home, and even if someone was what would she say? What could she possibly say led her out here other than a suspicious hunch, nothing more than a whisper of a feeling?

So she turns back to her car, and that’s when she feels it. A warm breeze on the back of her neck. 

It’s strange enough to make her turn around. And then she’s not looking at the same house, dark and cold and empty in the snow. She’s looking at a different one, the same size but painted white and glowing in sunny daylight. No snow; rust-colored autumn leaves flutter across the driveway. 

When she looks back, her car has disappeared. There are only tall trees, daubed with orange leaves, swaying in the wind. She lets out a startled breath and holds up her hand: the sunlight is warm on her skin. This is impossible. This is-

Two women come into view, hurrying from behind her towards the house. They don’t seem to notice her, not even when she steps closer and recognises one of them. Joyce Byers. Hair long and loose, face more youthful than Karen remembers - or at least more carefree. She’s wearing a pale pink sweater and she’s holding a cardboard box labelled _Kitchen - FRAGILE_ under her arm.

“Is that box too heavy for you?” she asks, her voice teasing, shading her eyes against the sun as she looks back at her companion. Karen, too, looks at the other woman. She’s slightly taller than Joyce, hair a shiny tawny brown, wearing a sundress in pale yellow and a hat that obscures her face from view. She’s holding her own box with two hands. 

“So what if it is?” comes the response, and oh. _Oh_. 

“Where’s that cheerleader strength gone, Karen?”

She turns and the sunlight hits her face and it’s _her_ , it’s _Karen_ herself, hair undyed and free of the perm, loose and wavy over her shoulders, smiling and happy and careless. “I got old, Joyce. So did you.”

(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-)

Joyce smirks and then continues up to the house. Her Karen, the one that belongs in this world, follows her, and then without a second thought Karen does the same. Maybe she’s imagining this whole thing but she’s always prided herself on being rational, clear-headed; she has to find out what this is. 

Joyce and not-Karen put the boxes down in the hallway already stacked high with them: moving-in day. Karen scans the writing on them. She spots _Jonathan’s room_ but not _Will’s._ “Thank you for doing this with me,” Joyce is saying, when she turns back around. Karen barely looks at her. She can’t keep her eyes off not-Karen’s face, like looking in a mirror, a mirror that erases the influences of fashion on her hairstyle and the stress of boredom on her skin. And neither of them can see her. Neither of them can see her! Experimentally, she pushes at a mug sitting atop one of the boxes to see if they’ll notice it fall - but her hand just passes through it like she’s not even there.

“Of course,” not-Karen responds. “I’m proud of you, Joyce. I know leaving him wasn’t easy.”

Joyce sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “It wasn’t, but it’s for the best. I couldn’t have another child with him, not when our marriage was just…”

Karen lets her voice fade out as she ventures beyond the hall, looking around with wide eyes. The house is small but light and airy, devoid of all but the most basic furniture. There’s a short letter pinned to the fridge:

    _Joyce,_
    _I’ll be back for your moving day!! There’s no way I’m staying at Radcliffe for the whole alumni thing, it’s exhausting, and there’s so many Tudor Hall girls here wanting to know how I am, how many children I have, what car my husband drives. (If only they knew! - and also, you’d think that being Harvard-educated would save you from this kind of talk but apparently not.) So I’m flying back to Indianapolis tomorrow and then we can drive your stuff up from Hawkins together. I’m sending this first class so you don’t hire some awful guy to help with it all. You’ve got me for that now._
    _Karen xxx_

Karen frowns at it. There’s so much in it that she doesn’t understand: Harvard-educated? _If only they knew_ , like she doesn’t have children, like maybe she doesn’t have a husband - no Ted, no Nancy, no Mike, no Holly… _You’ve got me for that now._

She’s never signed a letter with three kisses in her life, except when she was a teenager writing love notes to the boys from Park School she met at cross-school dances. There’s a weird, tight feeling in her chest. She’s not that close with Joyce, not really, not outside of this _fantasy._ They’ve known each other since childhood. But while Karen was sent to boarding school, her financially ailing father’s last ditch attempt at maintaining his status as one of Indiana’s old elite, Joyce went to Hawkins Elementary, Hawkins Middle, and Hawkins High. And then Karen returned with Ted, respectably middle-class, and socialised with Joyce because of their children and little more.

With a strange feeling of regret she tries to put the pieces together. Is this- other-Karen went to Harvard? Fulfilled her dreams of studying art history, instead of marrying and settling down because that was just what you did? And now she’s here, unmarried, childless… with Joyce.

She goes back out to the hallway, where not-Karen and Joyce are standing only inches apart. Joyce is smiling and looking at not-Karen like- 

It’s like roses blooming in her face. It’s a look that holds all the sunlight of this room, of this world. Joyce looks at the thing wearing Karen’s face like _that,_ and not-Karen’s hand comes up and loops around Joyce’s slender wrist with so much ease-

Suddenly it’s very difficult to breathe. 

She steps back as not-Karen leans closer, as their intimacy makes sudden and terrifying sense. She steps back and turns away and then just as quickly she’s facing the dark, and the cold, and the snow. The warm sunlight is gone; when she turns back, the house is the Byers’ old house once more. Not-Karen and Joyce are gone too. 

She feels weak, light-headed, dizzy. She’s left in the cold with a weight on her chest that wasn’t there before, a weird feeling like something’s not quite _right_ in her life, that something’s gone wrong somewhere, that maybe she should have gone to college after all because if she had-

Her and Joyce-

It’s hard to believe the whole thing wasn’t a dream.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Okay, so run this by me again. Brenner is the guy who gave El superpowers, right? He was in charge of the Lab. But then… you thought he died. But he didn’t?”

“He faced the _demogorgon._ Forgive me if I’m finding it hard to believe he’s alive.” Dustin’s voice is scathing.

“Steve faced the demodogs,” Max suggests, with a kind of _gotcha_ tone in her voice.

Dustin rounds on her. “That’s _different_ , the demodogs are way smaller than the demogorgon and the demodogs couldn’t portal shift, could they?”

Robin’s gaze drifts to Kali, who’s eating her last slice of lukewarm pizza with a disinterested expression. They’re all sitting on the floor of Robin’s room with four greasy, half-finished boxes of pizza between them on the carpet, because _we need fuel, Robin!_ She looks at Dustin, who gave up somewhere around the third pizza, through narrowed eyes. They’d returned from their quest for the Byers’ new address without success. Even the library, their last resort, hadn’t had it. And when Robin had tried to ask Marissa, the librarian, she’d just received a blank stare and a “Miss Buckley, don’t forget to return that Russian language textbook you’ve had on loan for four months and eight days now. The Parents’ Association petition won, remember? Russian books are being archived,” which had made her grind her teeth, because learning Cyrillic is hardly going to turn her into a Soviet spy. It’s just a curiosity of hers. A mild obsession.

The documents they found in the Lab are in a box under Robin’s bed, because _there’s no way we’re getting pizza sauce on them, Henderson, we’re gonna wait until we’ve finished eating._

She guesses the time has come.

“Alright, shitbirds, stop arguing about whatever the hell a demogorgon is and put the pizza boxes by the door.” She reaches under the bed and grabs the box while Max and Dustin make themselves useful, and then she freezes as Kali moves to sit beside her. Shit, she smells so nice. Why does she smell so nice? She probably hasn’t showered in ages…

Robin rolls her eyes at herself and opens the box. 

And if she didn’t believe it all at first, all the weird crap about MK-Ultra and guys with machine guns guarding the place that everyone likes to pretend made lightbulbs, then she certainly believes it now.

“Holy shit,” she breathes, because holy shit.

There it is, in black and white. El’s photo, her looking small and scared and bald in a hospital gown, stapled to a whole stack of papers. _Subject 011. Jane Ives._ And stapled to the sheet beneath that - _Subject 008. Kali Prasad._ The girl in the photo attached to this one is just a _child._ Massive dark eyes and close-cropped hair. She glances at Kali, whose face is impassive.

“I haven’t forgotten what I looked like back then,” Kali says, and her tone is gentler than it has been before. “None of this is shocking to me.”

Just as gently, she takes the papers from Robin’s hands and begins to rifle through them with a great deal more efficiency. Dustin and Max come back to sit on the floor and Dustin looks like he’s three seconds from ripping the papers out of Kali’s hands and going through them himself, but lucky for him he resists the urge. Kali could _definitely_ tear him in half.

“You said you didn’t believe me,” she says quietly, so quietly they barely hear her.

“What?”

“You said you didn’t believe me. That Brenner is alive.” Her eyes are on Dustin. “Well, here’s your proof.” She hands him a file and all the color drains out of his face as he reads it. Then he passes it to Max, wordlessly, who reads it and passes it to Robin. Which makes her the fourth person in the room to know that Brenner has connections to Russia.

She tries not to think about the Russians too often. The elevator, the tunnels, even the bright lights of Starcourt are locked away in a tight little box at the back of her head. They venture out sometimes at night, giving her nightmares that have her wake in a rigid cold sweat, but she’s coping. Most of the time what happened last summer feels like a bad dream.

Now, so does this. 

`REPORT 11/12/83`
    `Dr. M█████ B██████ hospitalised at I███████████ Military Hospital. In stable condition. Temporarily suspended from office pending inquiry into the failure of Project Dante under his leadership. Dr. S████ O████ appointed to replace him temporarily. Agents C██████ and E████ appointed as protection detail. `
`REPORT 11/20/83`
    `Inquiry held, full report to be filed. Dr. B██████ removed from office permanently with immediate effect. Dr. O████ appointed his permanent successor. Dr. B██████ described to react with anger at the result; he tore three stitches in a fit of anger and was sedated by the nurse. Discharge date set for 11/26, pending review by Dr. A████.`
`REPORT 11/25/83`
    `Dr. B██████’s status reviewed by Dr. A████, declared fit for discharge on 11/26. To be transported to ██████ ████, Virginia by HH-60G ███ to face a retirement tribunal. Project Dante concluded with immediate effect; Dr. O████ to supervise Project Pandora henceforth.`
`REPORT 11/27/83`
    `HH-60G ███ declared missing. Extensive radar searches uncovered nothing. Dr. B██████ and Agents C██████ and E████ declared missing. Suspected Soviet involvement; Dr. O████ and Agent L█████ to head internal investigation.`
`REPORT 12/02/83`
    `Agent O██ admitted to Soviet collusion after enhanced interrogation. Samples discovered missing from HNL. Still no trace of HH-60G ███ or its passengers. Agent L█████ to remain on the investigation; Dr. O████ to focus on Project Pandora.`

Her gaze is fixed on the word _Soviet_ for a long time, long after she’s finished reading. When she finally becomes aware of her surroundings again, Dustin is speaking with that blustery tone he always uses when he’s afraid of what he’s talking about. “It’s gotta be him, I mean, Dr. M. B.? And I-something, that’s probably Indianapolis, right? 12th of November, that’s the day after El killed the demogorgon at school…”

He’s rambling. Max cuts him off: “Okay, but you seemed pretty sure he was dead. Like, ‘the demogorgon disembowelled him’ kind of sure.”

“That’s what we _thought_ but we never saw it, did we? It was going after him when we ran so we assumed it got him, because it’s pretty hard to escape the demogorgon, like I said, but I’m a firm believer in the truth and if _she_ says he’s alive-” he points at Kali “-and the _evidence_ says so-” he points at the paper in Robin’s hands “-then it’s possible.”

“When you’ve eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” she recites, with a faintly bitter grin.

“You two are so annoying,” Max says. Robin and Dustin smirk at each other, before turning serious again. 

“Wait a minute. How do you know he’s alive if he’s in Russia?” she asks, looking at Kali. 

Kali shrugs. “I don’t know where he is. I just- saw him. You might call it a vision.”

Dustin lets out a low _whoa_ ; Max, as ever, looks sceptical. Robin’s just along for the ride. “Okay, so we know he’s alive, and somehow he’s involved with Russia.” Somehow her voice remains steady, even blasé. Russians, that’s fine. She can fight Russians on the weekend. What’s the big deal? “And we know that Russia is involved with Hawkins, and with the Upside Down.”

“Oh, shit,” Dustin says, as Max’s face drops.

“El’s in danger,” she says quietly. “Shit, earlier she called me and asked me if there was anything weird going on.”

Kali is nodding. “This is why I need to see her. She needs to go into hiding.”

“It seems like she’s doing a pretty good job of it right now,” Robin says. “Surely if we can’t find her-”

“This is the _USSR_ we’re talking about, Buckley, they can do anything. They probably have sleeper agents in every town- hell, it could be anyone, even lunch lady Phyllis.” 

Max swings around to glare at him. “Okay, so what do you suggest? Because it seems like we’re flat out of options to me.”

“We stick to plan A. We find out where they’re living and we go up there.” Robin isn’t even sure of it herself until she says it: then she sits up with new resolve. Digging around aimlessly in the vacant Hawkins Lab is one thing, sure, but this is quite another. This time they have a purpose. 

“I’ve been trying to call them all afternoon. No one’s home.” 

“So we use Cerebro.” Dustin has lit up at the thought of using what he’s probably affectionately termed his ‘baby’. “We’ll have to set it up, of course, I took it down yesterday because of the snow…”

“What, no duets with Suzie when the weather’s bad?” Max smirks. He flips her off. 

“Cerebro?” There’s an adorable crinkle between Kali’s eyebrows as she frowns. 

“A long distance ham radio,” Robin offers. “We can call El on it. But not tonight,” she adds, as Dustin looks suspiciously like he’s about to drag them all out the door. She indicates the window when he opens his mouth to protest, where she can see large flakes of snow drifting down past the glass. “It’s literally snowing right now. Do you really wanna damage your equipment just so we can talk to them tonight? Plus it’s, like, ten pm. If you wanna drive up to Minnesota in the next few days we need all the sleep we can get.”

Somehow he accepts her logic, which is a relief. She’s hardly the voice of reason but she has to make an effort sometimes. The stack of documents goes back in the box under her bed and Max and Dustin both troop off to their own homes - and Robin is left facing Kali across the bed. She’s crossed her arms and she looks less threatening than ever. Just wary, unsure. Even scared.

“I’ll sleep on the couch, if you want,” Robin offers. “You can have my bed.”

“No, that’s- this is your house. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

“I’m offering,” she says, a little more firmly. Besides, her parents walking into the living room to find Kali asleep on the sofa doesn’t really bear thinking about. If it’s Robin they find, she can play it off on some random eccentricity. They already think she’s the weirdest person who ever walked the earth. Finally it can come in handy. (They view her with a fond, vaguely confused benevolence. _That’s nice, dear_ is practically the title of the Buckleys’ parenting manual.)

Kali blinks. “Fine.” 

Robin goes over to her wardrobe and grabs her own pyjamas, as well as a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt from when her band friend Teddy dragged her to the Bruce Springsteen concert in Indianapolis a year ago. She thrusts them at Kali with the feeling that unless she’s forceful about it, Kali will say no. But she’s arrived with what looks like nothing but the clothes on her back and the least Robin can do is give her pyjamas.

Kali looks at her strangely before accepting them. Robin clears her throat: “The bathroom’s the first door on the right. You can, like, shower… and clean your teeth, and stuff.”

“Thanks,” she says. 

“You’re welcome.” Robin hesitates for a moment before turning towards the door. “Well, goodnight.”

“Robin.”

She turns back. Kali is looking at her with a strange expression; Robin doesn’t know what it means.

“Thank you. Not just for this but for- for helping me. For trusting me.”

Robin looks at her for a moment. It’s true, they’re trusting her with a lot. Finding out where El is for her. Sharing the documents from the Lab with her. Letting her stay in Robin’s _house_ , for god’s sake. But there’s something about her, powers aside-

It isn’t even a gay thing.

She just seems like someone, despite the tough exterior, who means what she says when she says she needs help.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Uh, we’d like a room?”

The clerk looks at her balefully. “Double or twin?”

At least he asked, Nancy thinks, instead of just assuming. She shares a glance with Steve, who’s fidgeting with his car keys. “Twin,” she says decisively. The clerk just raises his eyebrows before handing them a key.

On the way out of the office Steve stops by a sad-looking cigarette vending machine, and offers it a few coins. Nothing happens. “Piece of shit,” he mutters, as the clerk calls over: “It’s been out of order for weeks, there’s a store just a few minutes down the road you can get some.”

“Steve-” she tries, because it’s late and- well. She doesn’t want him going off alone; she doesn’t want to be left here alone. It isn’t exactly the Ritz. 

But he gives her a distracted look from under hair that’s beginning to droop after a long day and says, “I’ll be ten minutes. Room 15, right?”

She nods but he’s already walking off, shoulders hunched, a tall, twitchy figure in the dark. She doesn’t get it, why he’s suddenly so antsy. The last few miles to the motel he drove in silence.

She finds their room and claims the bed nearest the door. She sits on it crossed-legged and opens the mapbook before her, tracing their path from page to page. She should call her mom. She doesn’t want to. Instead she makes _sure_ they know where they’re going, all the way up to the northeast corner of Minnesota. The journey will take at least seven hours; they should sleep soon, so that they can get an early start in the morning.

She closes the mapbook and goes outside, hunching against the cold, to the payphone a few doors down. It’s not her mother’s number she dials, however. She cradles the receiver and holds her breath as she waits for him to pick up.

“Jonathan?” she says, when the phone connects.

“Nancy?” It’s Will. He sounds older than before. His voice has gotten lower. “Hang on, I’ll get Jonathan. Jonathan!” 

She hopes she has enough coins for this.

Finally Jonathan comes to the phone. “Nancy, hey,” he says. He sounds tired. 

“Hey. Um, how are you? How are things?”

There’s a moment of silence. “Fine. We’re fine. How are you?”

“I’m okay.” She looks around at the parking lot, the numerous closed doors that could conceal absolutely anyone or anything, anything at all. “Just, y’know, at home. I was grounded.” She’s not sure why she’s lying, not really. There’s the obvious reason, that she should not and does not trust the phone, because anyone might be listening, but that’s not just it. He sounded so worn down when he picked up. She knows Joyce relies on him for a lot, with their family - she also knows Joyce hasn’t been doing great. Maybe something happened. And if something did happen-

Nancy’s not gonna add to that by forcing him to worry about her as well.

“Oh, that sucks.” The silence is weighty, awkward. They’re not made to lie to each other. They work best when they’re telling the truth. “Listen, Nance, I gotta go, but- um- thanks for checking in. Stay safe, okay?”

“Okay,” she responds. “You too.” 

With a click he hangs up; _stay safe_ lingers in her mind. What’s happening with him? What are they walking into, driving up to Minnesota? What is he lying about? (What is she lying about?)

“Nice.”

She whips around to see Steve leaning against the wall behind her, smoking one of his freshly-bought cigarettes, twirling his car keys in his hand. “What?”

“I heard everything, Nance,” he says. straightening up. “‘I’m at home’? ‘I’m grounded’?”

“I couldn’t tell him over the phone,” she tries, defensive.

He shrugs. “I’m not saying you could, I’m just saying… Your whole _thing_ is that you understand each other, right? Like, he listened to you about Barbara when I was ignoring the whole thing.”

“That’s not-”

“It’s okay, Nance. Really. But that’s what I’m saying. I didn’t get it, Jonathan did, and now you’re pushing him away and you’re not _letting_ him get it. Is that right?”

She frowns, shakes her head at the wall. “I don’t…” She feels out of sorts, confused. She didn’t think Steve still had the ability to get in her head. He turns and heads to their room, and she follows him with a frown still on her face. He slumps onto his bed with a force that makes the frame tremble, and stares at the wallpaper. “How do you know?” she asks, finally.

He looks at her. “What?”

“How do you know that I- I don’t-” Her eyebrows knit together. “I just- You’re so good at reading people. At- at knowing why they’re doing what they’re doing. How?”

There’s faint amusement in his eyes now. “It’s not, like, a superpower. We’re all wired differently, right? You look at things like… like they’re problems to be solved. Like how you’re looking at me right now with that adorable little crinkle in your forehead.” Automatically her hand goes up to smooth out her skin; he laughs. She glares at him. “I look at them like… I don’t know. Like whatever they are, I guess. I kinda take things as they come.”

She considers him for a moment. “Is that why you were so desperate for cigarettes?”

He looks away. So she was right. “Stress relief, y’know?” he says, running a hand through his increasingly limp hair. “I just- I agreed to this and then before I could think about it we were driving off and _doing_ this and it only really hit me when we passed the state line what exactly _this_ is.”

Instinctively she moves to sit next to him.

“This isn’t just some story, Nance. This is my _dad._ My family. My life. Whatever we find up there is gonna… it’s gonna blow my life wide open. If we expose my dad then- that’s it. This is just- yeah. It’s a lot.”

Her hand lands on his. He tenses and immediately she regrets it - but then he relaxes again, and turns his hand over so their fingers lock together. His thumb traces circles on her skin and it’s… weird, yeah, but also kind of… nice?

“I’m proud of you,” she whispers. “For doing this with me.”

He smiles faintly. “Sure.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

The house is cold, and full of blue light. The kind of light you get in the early hours, right before dawn - or else just after dusk, when the sun’s dipped below the horizon and the dark is closing in. Joyce shivers and pulls her brother’s jacket tighter around her. It’s huge on her, and the corduroy is warm, but she still feels the cold in her bones.

“Mom?” she calls. Her voice is thin and wobbly. There’s no response.

She’s ten years old, and this is a dream. She knows this is a dream, but that doesn’t stop her calling out again - “Mom?” - and stepping forward, the floorboards creaking under her feet. It’s a dream she used to have all the time, before. Before everything happened. And what exactly that was is hazy in her head but it doesn’t matter, not right now, because she has to find her mom. 

There’s still no response. The hallway is vast and looming over her head. There are doors on her right and on her left, and she knows what lies behind them, though she hasn’t been here in years. Bedroom, bedroom, bathroom, dining room. At the end is the kitchen and that’s where she goes, heart in her throat, wanting her mom but her mom isn’t here.

Standing by the sink is a short, thin figure, dark-haired, wearing pants instead of a skirt so she knows it’s not her mom. The figure turns, silhouetted against the icy blue of the world outside the window, and the sharp profile, the long nose, the wide eyes-

“Aunt Darlene,” she whispers. “Where’s my mom?”

Aunt Darlene shakes her head. “She’s not here,” she says. She extends out a hand, faintly greasy. There are half-formed latke patties spaced out on the countertop, and she smells like onions and oil. Joyce takes her hand. And then her aunt’s eyes are drawn up to a point above and beyond Joyce’s head. The expression that comes over her face is indescribable, and Joyce knows she can’t look. If she turns then she’ll look like that, all empty and transfixed, mouth gaping in something that could be awe or it could be terror, Joyce doesn’t know.

She wants to let go of her aunt’s hand. She wants to let go but her aunt won’t let her, with a grip tighter than a vice, and it _hurts_ now, hurts different to her skin being pinched. It’s like something is entering her blood and the pain spreads, spreads from her hand up her arm to her head and then it’s like her skull is going to burst. 

    Doyou **see**? 

Her aunt asks her, but that’s not her aunt’s voice. There’s something _wrong_. And she can’t _see_ , see what? There’s nothing to see- it _hurts_ -

But then she does see. 

She sees a man, driving- in the snow- years and years of white all around him, his car gray, a convertible- She doesn’t know who he is, only he feels familiar. He feels familiar like a distant memory - only she’s ten years old and she doesn’t know him, not yet. Not yet.

This is when she wakes up. 

She’s being jostled by the movement of the plane, turbulence making her stomach turn. Across from her Murray is watching. “Nice beauty sleep?” he asks. She really, really wants to hit him. “We’re nearly there.”

“Thanks,” she says, thanklessly, twisting her hands together in her lap. She feels strange, off-balance after her dream. Not for the first time she has to ask herself what the _fuck_ she’s doing here, on a military aircraft headed to the goddamn fucking USSR. She’s not James Bond, for god’s sake. She’s never left the USA. She’s only ever taken two domestic flights, even. But here she is.

As they’re landing she grits her teeth and shuts her eyes, and when she opens them again Murray is grinning. “ _You don’t know how lucky you are,_ ” he sings, terribly off-key, and when they’re stepping out into the blinding morning sun he continues around an already-lit cigarette - “ _Back in the USSR”_ \- and then, flatly, shading his eyes as they spot Owens approaching, “Gee, it’s good to be back home.”

“Good flight?” Owens asks. He, unlike them, is wearing aviator sunglasses and looks remarkably unruffled after their long flight. Murray just scowls and Joyce sighs. 

“Can we get on with it?” she asks, wearily. Her ears are still ringing from the pressure changes and her head feels weird, fuzzy, like she hasn’t quite woken up yet. 

Owens nods, and they follow him towards the long, flat building at the edge of the airstrip. There are mountains towering in the distance and everything is white and bleak, even bleaker than north Minnesota. She tugs her coat tighter around her and wants to go home. (What does that even mean, really, anymore? Is home Minnesota? Is home Indiana? Does home maybe, just maybe, lie with the man who might be waiting for her here in Russia? She doesn’t know.)

In the airbase Owens hands her and Murray a bag of clothes each, with that apologetic smile she’s beginning to grow used to. (It still grates on her, though, goddamnit.) “It’s a covert op,” he explains, as she opens it to inspect the contents. It’s just a pile of clothes in dull colors. “You can’t have anything on you that could link you to the West if you get caught. Including underwear-” he winces as he says it, while Murray just barks out a laugh “-and personal items. You can store those and your clothes in a locker here for when we get back.”

“He means _if_ we get back,” Murray says to her in an undertone when Owens has gone. She glares at him and he indicates the solitary cubicle they’ve been offered as a changing room. “Ladies first.”

When she’s locked the door behind her she takes a moment - just one singular moment, her first since this whole whirlwind started - to just stare at herself in the mirror and breathe. Firstly to think _what the fuck,_ again - because what the fuck is she doing here? Here, in the USS-fucking-R. First it was an airbase in Iowa, that was bad enough, but now- _You can’t have anything on you that could link you to the West if you get caught._ Well, that fills her with goddamn confidence. She’s a waitress at Mickey’s Diner, not an international spy. She’s not built for this shit. 

But apparently Owens thinks she is, or at least he doesn’t care. It’s probably the latter, though with his jovial ‘uncle’ attitude it’s hard to be sure. (Idly, she reflects on the irony - or perfect synchronicity - of his first name. Uncle Sam indeed.) Murray’s all gung-ho for this, but Murray’s definitely got something wrong with him.

She does too, but hers isn’t useful in this scenario. Hers makes her hands shake and her vision blur. Hers doesn’t make her want to jet off halfway around the world to save a man who may or may not be dead already. 

The clothes fit her better than her own clothes do, honestly. A black thermal turtleneck, khaki pants, a gray sweatshirt, a heavy black coat. Even the sweatshirt is fitted and it feels strange, really. Not only that they knew her measurements but that she’s wearing clothes that are in her size at all; she rarely buys her own clothes, wearing the clothes Lonnie left behind or clothes Jonathan has grown out of most of the time. She’s half afraid Murray will make some stupid comment but he just brushes past her when she comes out, his face sour and stern. Then she’s left facing Owens in the corridor, her arms wrapped around her midriff and her heart irrationally pounding.

“You okay?” he asks mildly.

She fumbles for the cigarettes and lighter she’s been given - Russian Laikas, with a dog on the pack - but Owens clears his throat. “Sorry. You can’t smoke in here. Fire hazard, y’know?”

She slides the pack back into her pocket and tries to prevent her hands shaking. Her chest is tight and this whole thing has been one long anxiety attack, really, if she thinks about it, but if she thinks about it she’ll spiral into a full-blown panic attack and this is _really_ not the time.

“You okay?” he asks again. “If you need to take something…”

She sharpens. “ _Take something?_ What-“ Then it clicks. Her voice is quietly furious. “You have my medical records.” 

Once again, Owens looks faintly apologetic. “Yes. Sorry, but we had to do a background check, especially for this kind of mission. Are you up to it?”

_Is she up to it._ What a question. What a goddamn question. It’s a bit fucking late for that, now that they’re in an airbase in Soviet Russia that the Soviets don’t know exists. She really, really wants a smoke right about now. “Yes,” she says, finally, though there’s still tension thrumming in her veins and her stomach’s in knots. “I don’t need to ‘take something.’ I’m fine. Let’s just do this.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Yes! Sinclair! You’re doing great out there, keep it up!”

Lucas mops the sweat off his forehead with a towel a sophomore whose name he doesn’t know has given him; the guy is grinning with praise. Beside him, Linda is smiling with rosy cheeks. “Yeah, you’re doing great,” she says. Her voice is soft. (She’d spent all of last night’s party hovering near him, her fine curtain of hair shimmering in neon lights, her lips mouthing the words to _Say You Say Me_ to him even though he was too cowardly to ask her to dance.)

He shrugs, embarrassed. The next quarter’s the last one and his whole body is aching with exertion, but it’s true, he’s doing great. They’re several points up and if they can keep it up then maybe they’ll actually _win_. His first match of high school and they might win. The thought alone is enough to put a smile on his face.

Before he goes back on the court he scans the bleachers, more out of habit than anything else, but he’s disappointed. No flash of red hair, no bright grin. Max isn’t here. Dustin and Mike aren’t either - he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. None of them care about sport and since they’re basically not friends anymore, he doesn’t know what he expected.

But still.

His parents are smiling at him, his mom making cringy little gestures of encouragement. He gives her an exasperated wave. Then his eyes catch on Troy, gulping down water by the side of the court. He was on for the second quarter only, when Lucas was pulled off because “We don’t want our new star to tire too quickly, do we?” Troy gives him an evil look, and Lucas just smiles at him. (Oh, how the tables turn.)

Jackson claps him on the shoulder and then the last quarter begins in a flurry of activity, shouting, the ball rapping against the court with the intensity of gunfire. Lucas has it for a few moments before an opponent takes it out of his hands. It passes between the two teams for a while until suddenly it’s in front of him again and he lunges for it, dribbles towards the hoop, shoots-

And scores. The crowd, a home crowd, goes wild. He feels a rush of pride and pumps his fist in the air - and then looks to the bleachers again out of habit. He tells himself the sudden dampening of his victory is nothing to do with the absence of red hair in the stands. (He’s lying.)

Play resumes and now it’s the older, taller boys who dominate the court. He lets himself relax a little. And then he sees something.

He’s not sure what it is, not at first. His gaze is distracted, unfocused on the crowd, as his pulse speeds up and his hands go clammy. He feels a surge of adrenaline unrelated to the game. The sounds of the players fade out to background noise as he scans the room looking for the demogorgon, demodogs, towering fleshy Mind Flayer - whatever the threat might be.

He finds nothing. Nothing, until his eyes land on the middle of the crowd. There’s a woman with blonde hair watching him; her hand is holding something by her side. _Gun_ , he thinks. _Government agent. Here to kill me_ , he thinks, _to shut me up for once and for all._ A spike of fear, followed by rage: _I kept my mouth shut!_

He’s going through exit plans in his head, escape routes. Maybe if he runs now he can make it to the exit before she shoots… Or maybe he’d just wind up bleeding out on the court in front of everyone, in front of his _parents_. She’ll probably shoot him after the game, on his way out, round the back of the building… Maybe if he can leave sticking close to Jackson and the others she won’t get the chance-

“Sinclair!”

There’s a _crack._ He thinks for a moment he’s been shot, that she’s done it here and now - but a quick look finds him intact. It was the ball, he realises, colliding with the wall near his head. The court’s gone silent: everyone is looking at him. When his eyes find the woman in the crowd again, she looks perfectly ordinary. Nothing suspicious at all. 

‘What the hell was that?” Jackson spits, as he brushes past him to collect the ball. “We’re down a couple points. If we lose the game because of you…”

Coach Jefferson is signalling to him, face a mask of fury. Lucas reads his gestures well enough: _You’re out._ Numb, he walks off the court. Troy moves to replace him with a victorious, sneering expression. Beyond him, Unnamed Sophomore and Linda look… well. Disappointed. So does his dad, though he’s quick to replace it with a smile when Lucas meets his eyes.

Lucas rubs his eyes and curses himself and what’s obviously his overactive imagination. He can’t believe he- he really- how could he?

Out of the corner of his eye he sees a flash of red, and he resists looking at it for as long as he can. He’s not losing his mind, goddamnit. But then he looks, and the red is Max’s bright hair as she hurries out of the gym. He stops thinking; he races after her. “Max!” he calls when the doors have swung shut behind him. It turns out he didn’t need to - she’s leaning against the wall waiting for him.

“What happened?” is the first thing she says. “You froze.”

He shrugs, suddenly defensive. “What are you doing here?”

She looks good, he thinks. Her hair is cut slightly shorter than it used to be and her summer freckles have faded. Her skin is clear and smooth. He hasn’t had the chance to properly study her like this, one on one, in a while. “We need your help,” she says, and of course. _We._

“You and Mike, you mean.” 

She opens her mouth indignantly. “It’s not _like_ that. Jesus, you really think it’s like that? Me and _Mike?_ ” She shakes her head. “He’s not involved.”

He frowns. “Involved in what?”

“Look, we have a… situation. We need your help to fix Cerebro.”

He narrows his eyes. “What situation.”

“It’s hard to explain. It’s…” There’s a weird look in her eyes. “Come with me and you’ll see for yourself.”

“Is it-” he has to force the words out “-the Upside Down?”

Quickly she shakes her head. “No, no, no, it’s not. It’s about El, though. We wanna talk to her, but Cerebro’s not working…”

“So it’s not the Upside Down.” He rubs his forehead. “Listen, I don’t know why you think I’ll be able to fix it anyway.”

“Please? We- I’m worried about El.” And that does the trick, because Max doesn’t worry unnecessarily. Her blue eyes have gone big and her lip is trembling a little. Lucas looks away. 

“Okay, fine. But I swear if you make me climb Weathertop in thirty-degree weather I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”

“We’re just going to Dustin’s, don’t worry. Sure your little legs can manage the hike?”

He snorts. “Hey, I’m athletic now. Check out these guns.” He makes a show of kissing his biceps; she makes a show of looking revolted. They both laugh.

And then it’s her turn to look away, and bitterly he’s reminded that they’re not together, not anymore. He misses her a lot. He hopes she misses him too.

She waits for him while he changes and tells his parents where he’s going and then they cycle to Dustin’s in a silence that isn’t quite awkward. Just lonely. Lucas sneaks glances at her and enjoys the way her profile looks against the freshly fallen snow, her hair like fire against the ice. Once she catches him looking, but she doesn’t tell him off. Just gives him a vague, shy smile. (Maybe- if only- perhaps-)

“You okay?” she asks, when they’re nearing Dustin’s house.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“The way you froze, during the game. I don’t know, it looked- it looked bad. Did you see something?”

He tenses, hackles rising despite himself, despite the laugh they just shared. “I didn’t see anything,” he says. It comes off cold and snappish, and he regrets it as she looks away with a bitter “Sorry I asked.”

And then they arrive at Dustin’s, and his sour mood goes from bad to worse, because whose bike is that sitting out on the lawn? Mike goddamn Wheeler’s.

“You said he wasn’t involved,” Lucas says in a furious undertone.

She looks helpless. “I didn’t think he was. But can’t you just- what is your _problem_ with him?”

He’s silent for a moment. He doesn’t really know. Something about how Max prefers to hang out with Mike than with him, and how Mike is so _obsessed_ with the past that it’s driving him a little insane because it’s worse than it was the year El was gone, and now she’s _gone_ gone, gone forever in a sense, and Lucas gets that that’s _why_ he’s acting like this but Lucas has his own problems too. “You don’t need both me and him.”

“ _What?”_

“To fix Cerebro. You don’t need both of us. And anyway, as you saw I’ve had a really bad day so I can’t take any of his bullshit right now, and you know he’s gonna come out with some bullshit. I’m going home.”

He swings back up onto the saddle of his bike. “Lucas,” Max says, a little desperately.

He can’t look at her. Everything is too weird and messed up in his head. He might have thrown the big game today because of the past, because of everything that happened, and that’s his future right there, big game after big game. If he wants a sports scholarship to one of the big colleges he can’t afford to get kicked off the team. Mike, even El, and Max too (though it hurts to admit it) - they represent that whole past, the thing that has him waking in a cold sweat, reaching for his army knife, his old life. Maybe the old and the new can’t coexist.

“Radio a code red if you need me,” he says, and then cycles away.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“What are you guys up to?” 

Will doesn’t look back as he returns to their room; El glances around and says “Stuff” before following him. Jonathan sighs, shaking his head at them as he finishes drinking his coffee. The difference from yesterday, when El wouldn’t speak to Will and just fixed him with an icy glare all day, is astounding. Somehow they’ve become friends, siblings, like Jonathan always hoped they would but feared they wouldn’t.

A few months into them all living together the pair of them had still been awkward, sullen with each other. Jonathan had confessed his worries about them to his mom one night after dinner, and she’d just looked at him with those big eyes of hers and smiled a little. “Give them time,” she’d said. “You’ll see.”

And now he’s seeing. Thick as thieves overnight. He breathes out in relief, and maybe there’s a little hope there too, despite the uncertainty hanging over them. For a moment he can believe that his mom really is in Minneapolis, and she really will be back tonight, and Will and El will be friends forever and they’ll never be lonely again, any of them.

But that’s not how it works. He knows this.

And last night, missing the turning over and over and over again, sends unease thrumming down his spine. The steadily rising sense of panic because what if they had never found the town? What if they could never come back, and Will was left alone in the town that’s not home yet, not really? What if his mom can’t come back? 

This is the thought that makes him grab his car keys and his coat. He heads down the hallway and knocks on the door of Will and El’s room. Will pokes his head out. “Yeah?”

“I’m going for a drive. I’ll be back in an hour or two, okay? Stay here. You can answer the phone if it rings but El can’t, okay?”

Will nods. “Okay.”

Jonathan frowns at him for a moment, expecting something further, but he gets nothing. Eventually Will shrugs and withdraws into the room, shutting the door firmly behind him. Jonathan looks at it for a moment with a furrowed brow. More secrets? This can’t be good.

But he shrugs his coat on, and locks the door behind him.

It takes him only five minutes to get to the town limit. He slows as he approaches it, irrationally afraid that he might wink out of existence the moment he crosses the town line. But he doesn’t. He’s still a few minutes away from the turning he missed three times- and then he reaches it, and he parks a few yards before it. The road is empty; it’s a grim, icy Sunday. People are staying cozy indoors, and part of him wishes he could be too.

But he needs to know what this is. Needs to know if he’s just losing his mind-

He walks up to the sign, the sign that indicates right for the town, swerving closer to the lake, and straight on for the road leading up all the way to Canada. It’s hard to miss, standing here. It’s in full view of the street, of cars coming up it. There’s no way he could miss it, not in broad daylight, not even in the snow. Not three times.

He crosses the road and peers at it from the verge on the other side. Behind him the trees are rustling in the wind. He tugs his coat tighter around himself. The sign is all too visible, still, even from here. The first time, maybe. Just maybe. But the second time? The third time?

He stares at it, hard. There’s nothing strange about it. It’s just a sign. But he can feel something anyway, something- a strange feeling in his chest, the same place he had the feeling of his mom talking to him from another dimension. There’s something here. He’s sure of it.

He steps closer. He’s in the middle of the road now, but it’s silent and dead, and somehow he knows there won’t be anything coming. Slowly he approaches the sign, glancing at the woods and the roads around him, before-

There.

There’s another road in between the other two. It wasn’t there before, and when he steps back it slides out of view again. What the hell is this? When he’s moved forward again he stares at it for a while, thinking furiously. Physics doesn’t work like that. Physics doesn’t obscure a whole road with the slightest shift of angles. This is something else.

Without hesitating he walks towards it - and then, after a brief pause, down it. He’s sure that if he can find answers anywhere, it will be here. And he _needs_ answers, or at least the answers to this question, anyway. Why he couldn’t find the town he lives in when the sign stands there bold as brass. The other questions, the ones about his mom and about El and Will, they’re something else. They still have his stomach in knots.

But this is something he can solve.

He follows the road for about ten minutes, hands in his pockets against the cold, until the road curves to the right and he gets a sense that whatever he’s looking for is around this corner. He takes a deep breath. Maybe he should have brought a weapon, he thinks, as he listens to the eerie silence of the trees. It’s too late now. 

He steps out around the corner, to find-

A chain link fence.

The fence straddles the road and extends into the forest on its either side, as far as he can see before it disappears into the trees. There’s a gate in the fence, wide enough for a car, but there’s a heavy chain around it. And a sign hanging off it: _GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. DANGER. KEEP OUT._

He stares at it mutely. He stares at it and all he can see is _Hawkins National Laboratory_ , _GOVERNMENT PROPERTY KEEP OUT_. He approaches the fence, winds his fingers around the links. They’re icy cold, and there are weeds tangling in it at the bottom. Nature reclaiming it. So whatever this is, it’s been vacant for a while.

He stares beyond the fence, at the road beyond. It winds through the trees out of sight, growing ever darker, ever more overgrown the further he looks. He burns to know what’s down there, even as it fills him with dread. Something about the narrowing darkness. The way the trees shift in the wind. He stares at it and it looks increasingly like the end of the tunnel, like a black void coming up to swallow him. Sucking him in.

With an effort he tears his gaze away and hurries away from the fence. His heart is pounding. Whatever this is - well, it hasn’t solved anything. All he has is more questions. More questions, and a creeping feeling of horror.

Where the hell has his mom brought them?

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

Mike takes one look at Cerebro’s various parts, scattered around Dustin’s garage, and throws his hands up in the air. “I have no idea how to fix this, Dustin. Why would you think I could fix this?”

Dustin sighs. “I don’t know, Mike, I guess I shouldn’t have!” He picks up a particularly frosty bit of metal and looks at it despondently. “I must have taken it down too late. The snow already fried it.”

“So what now? Why do you wanna use it to call El anyway? Can’t you phone her?” If nothing else, he feels a little annoyed that this is about _his_ girlfriend and he only got roped in this morning. 

“We tried. We’ve been trying for, like, twenty-four hours now. No one answers.”

His stomach sinks. That’s weird. “And that’s why you wanna talk to her?’

Dustin looks shifty. “Yeah.” His gaze flickers to the door. “But also-”

“Any progress, shitbird?”

Mike turns to see Robin, followed closely by a short girl with dark hair and brown skin. He frowns. “Who’s that?”

“Kali,” the girl says. “Jane’s sister.”

“Whoa, wait, _what?”_ He stares at her, a strange feeling of panic rising up inside him. El has a sister? And she never told him? Sure, they don’t speak as much as they used to, as much as they should, but this-

“Yeah,” Robin says, evenly. “She needs to talk to El.”

Kali sticks close to her as the two come closer, gingerly picking their way over the bits of metal strewn everywhere. “Can you fix it, this… Cerebro?”

He shakes his head. “No. It’s… yeah, no. Sorry.”

Max arrives, cheeks flushed with cold and an odd look on her face. “Mike, what are you doing here?”

He frowns at her. “This is _my_ girlfriend we’re trying to contact, isn’t it? I think I have a right to be here.”

They look at each other in tense silence for a moment before Dustin steps in between them. “Guys, listen, I have an idea.”

Three minutes later he’s on the phone to Mr. Clarke. Mike crosses his arms and stands next to him, the whole thing setting off alarm bells in his head. Mr Clarke has helped them before, sure, but this is different. Involving Mr Clarke with El…

He wouldn’t betray them. Would he?

“Stop thinking so loud,” Max says. “We’re not gonna tell him about El.”

He looks at her. “But still. This is dangerous.”

“He won’t tell anyone,” Kali intervenes, and there’s something in her tone. Something threatening. He looks her up and down. She’s not tall. She’s not physically threatening at all - hell, even Mike could take her in a fight - but her jaw is a harsh line and her eyes are like stone. And then he remembers, _shit._ El’s sister. Another number. Which surely means-

“She can make you see things,” Robin says, clearly having guessed where his thoughts were heading. “Stuff that’s not there.”

“It’s _awesome_ ,” Max says. He blinks at the fervor in her voice. Kali looks surprised too, surprised and almost… happy?

Mike doesn’t trust her. He doesn’t like _any_ of this. “Why do you need to find El, anyway?”

“Brenner is back.”

His stomach sinks to his toes. No, no, no, no that’s not happening, that’s not okay, he’s dead, Brenner’s _dead-_

“Yeah, we thought he was dead too. But he’s not. He’s in Russia.” Is it him or does Robin’s voice tremble when she says this? Jesus Christ, this is a lot to learn all at once. So Brenner’s in Russia and El has a sister, okay, meanwhile Nancy and Steve are driving up to Minnesota because his dad has links to Brenner (or something - he’s not quite sure on the details), and they’re probably going to visit the Byers while they’re there so if Max and Dustin had just _talked_ to him-!

He doesn’t say any of this, though, because Dustin hangs up the phone. “Mr. Clarke’ll be here in ten minutes,” he says, with a grin. 

“Great,” Mike says, flatly. “All this stuff with El - you couldn’t have told me earlier?”

Dustin scowls. “If you recall correctly, _I tried._ You and Lucas completely shut me down.”

“That wasn’t- that was Lucas’ fault-”

“Was it?” Max interrupts, and he swings around to glare at her. 

“It was both of your faults! Why am I, once again, the only reasonable one! I was the only one doing any sort of forward thinking and look-” Dustin gestures to Kali, who blinks “-I was right! Like always! So, Mike, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to apologise.”

“ _What?”_

“You heard me. Weird shit’s been going on in this town long enough that the second - the _second_ \- someone mentions anything weird, anything at all, we should all be listening. Okay?”

Mike stares at him for a moment. Goddamnit, he’s right. Swallowing his pride, he nods. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Good. Now, Mr. Clarke will be here any second.”

Robin and Kali have been watching this exchange with blank expressions. Kali turns to Robin and whispers something; Robin laughs. Mike narrows his eyes, but he doesn’t get a chance to say something because then there’s a knock on the door.

Dustin rushes to open it as they all crowd awkwardly in the hall by the phone, and Mike realises what a weird gathering they make. At least Mr. Clarke’s used to weird.

“Dustin!” he says. Then, “Mike and Max too, the gang’s all here! And… Robin? Is that Robin Buckley?”

Robin shuffles her feet. “Uh, hi, Mr. Clarke.”

“Well I never. You know Robin here always missed class for soccer practice but still pulled off the best grade in her class? I’m glad to see you’re finally applying yourself to science.”

Her cheeks go pink. ‘“i’m just the babysitter,” she mumbles. Mike wrinkles his nose.

“And who’s this?” Mr. Clarke is facing Kali, now. Mike feels a flash of panic.

“Kali,” she says. “I’m-”

“Robin’s friend from out of town,” Mike interrupts, before she can say something revealing like _bad place_ that he has to cover up with _Sweden._ (God, he misses El.) “Cerebro?”

“Cerebro,” Mr. Clarke confirms decisively, after another quizzical look at Kali. Mike sighs with relief at the dodged bullet and leads the way back out to the garage. Mr. Clarke spends a few minutes inspecting Cerebro’s frozen pieces, murmuring to himself and occasionally tutting, while all five of them watch apprehensively. If he can’t fix it- well. They’ll have to find another way. Because if Brenner’s out there- looking for El- with the _Russians_ \- the same Russians who were here only last summer-

“Sorry, kids.” Mr. Clarke stands up with an apologetic shrug. “You’re gonna need a few new parts.”

“What? What parts?” Dustin looks less frantic and more distraught. Mike supposes the thing is basically the love of his life. (And Suzie, by proxy.) 

“The antenna’s fine, but the snow’s got to the battery, I’m afraid.”

“Where can we get the new parts we need?” This is Max. At least she’s got her priorities in line; her tone is deadly serious.

“Well, Max, there are lots of suppliers for what you’re going to need, radio catalogues, magazines for enthusiasts, that kind of thing. I’m subscribed to a fair few myself - I’m sure Dustin here is too.” Unsurprisingly, Dustin nods. “The only problem is speed. I got the impression this is urgent? Unfortunately something ordered from a catalogue will take weeks to arrive.”

Mike groans. 

“Or,” he says, a mischievous glint in his eye, “I could order it through the AV Club budget, and we could have it on Tuesday.”

The change in atmosphere is instant. Dustin lets out a whoop, Max and Robin grin, and even Kali has a glimmer of excitement in her eyes. Mike feels a rush of relief, even as it’s tempered by more impatience. Tuesday is two days away. Brenner might have found El by then, she might- she might already be in a Lab somewhere, head shaved, scared and alone in a hospital gown-

“M’lord, you’re the best,” Dustin proclaims. Mike turns away, goes back out to the hallway, dials El’s number again by heart. There’s still no answer.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

Joyce clenches her gloved hands together as the snowy terrain rushes past. The wind buffets her face - the truck isn’t exactly insulated - and she buries it deeper in her cowl. Owens is opposite her, Murray beside her, a number of soldiers in plain clothes on their either side. They’re on their way. (They’re on their way-!)

“-gonna stay back, okay? We’re gonna let the squadron go in first, because it’s what they’ve been trained for, until they give us the all clear and then we’ll follow them, okay?” Owens is saying. His words are firm, like he thinks the pair of them will run into the prison at the first opportunity they get, guns blazing. Honestly? He’s probably right.

She’s thinking about Hopper in prison all these months, in this barren icy wilderness. He won’t have that stupid mustache anymore, she thinks. She hated that mustache. He was so proud of it, turning up at Melvald’s one day grinning from ear to ear. She’d stared at him in amazement and called him Tom Selleck, which he rather liked, though she was more of a Don Johnson girl herself. Later El told her that she didn’t even notice it when he came out of the bathroom and looked at her meaningfully, which must have really pissed him off. She represses a laugh at the thought and then has to swallow a lump in her throat.

“Did Jim ever tell you how we met?” 

She looks up. Murray’s gaze is distant, a wry smile poking at his mouth. She shakes her head.

“I was working at the New York Times for a while, y’know, investigative journalism. I kept cutting onto Jim’s crime scenes, publicising his cases. He hated it. But we had, y’know, what I like to think of as a working relationship. I passed him tips, he passed me tips. We cracked a few big cases. But the first time we _met_ -” He grins. “I was first on the scene, ‘cause it was my new job and I was a keen fucker, and coincidentally it was his first day in his promotion to detective, so when I arrived before him no one knew what the lead detective looked like so they assumed it was me.”

“They thought you were Hopper?” She smiles at the thought.

“I know, right? Ridiculous. I’m much smarter than he is. But anyway, when he arrived they tried to hold him back because they thought he was press. God, was he mad. And we’ve been best friends ever since.”

She tries to imagine them braiding each other’s hair; she snorts despite herself. Murray’s an asshole, but he sure knows how to lighten the mood. “I’ve known him since freshman year of high school. He used to do this thing, y’know, where he’d tip back on the back two legs of his chair, not even holding onto anything, so convinced he was invincible even though the football coach would drop him from the team if he got concussion.”

“‘Course he would,” Owens says, smiling. “Sounds just like him.”

She narrows her eyes. She doesn’t like that he’s sharing in his moment - what does he know? - but equally- well. Maybe he does know. There were all those months, after all. All those months after Will went missing and Hopper was at the Lab every week, helping them out, smoothing it over, making sure they paid up when her insurance refused to cover Will’s hospital bills because _Your son is legally dead, Mrs. Byers, so there’s not much we can do._ She has Owens to thank for that too. (She hates owing these people anything. But she knows that if this works - if they find him - then she’ll owe them a hell of a lot more.)

This has to work. They have to find him-

She’s not letting herself consider what will happen if they don’t. 

She thinks about Hopper at fifteen, herself at sixteen. She’s nine months older than him, a fact she liked to hold over him all the time. _No, you can’t finish the fries, because I’m older and I say so._ And later, _no, you can’t finish my cigarette, because it’s bad for your poor childish lungs._ It annoyed him to no end. It made her laugh. In those days he was blond and muscular, tall with one kind of smirk for the cheerleader girls and quite another for Joyce when they smoked under the steps.

“We’re gonna find him,” Murray says in an undertone. The belief in his eyes is fervent. It occurs to her that he’s certain they will; it also occurs to her that he’s comforting himself as much as he is her. “We will.”

She bites her lip, looks around at the other occupants of the truck. The soldiers are stone-faced. Most of them are much younger than her, barely older than Jonathan, and the thought makes her heart clench. God, she hopes he’s okay. They just had this fight - the fight about him doing too much and too little all at once, or rather her asking too much and too little of him - and now she’s doing it again, asking too much. Leaving him as the parent in her stead. It’s not right, she knows this. She also doesn’t know how to fix it. 

She left her kids alone in another country, and she’s probably the worst mother on the planet right now. Her chest feels tight.

But they’re safe in Minnesota. Minnesota is safe. 

She takes a deep breath. Owens is looking at her, a slight frown on his face. She wants to say _I told you so_ but she stays silent, and goes back to staring at her hands.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

     _Because life is so brief_  
_and time is a thief when you're undecided._  
_And like a fistful of sand,_  
_it can slip right through your hands._

“I can’t believe you still listen to Rod Stewart,” Nancy says, rolling her eyes. 

“Hey, it’s good!” Steve protests, shooting her a look as he taps his hand along to the beat on the steering wheel. “Just because your new thing’s Fleetwood Mac-”

“Oh, come _on_ , do not insult Fleetwood Mac or else I swear I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

He smirks, and sees out of the corner of his eye that she’s smiling too. Then he looks out the window and sees a sign flicker past: _Leaving Duluth._ They’re nearly there. “Hey, we’re gonna need that map again soon.”

She bends her head over it as he keeps his eyes on the road. It’s late afternoon; the sky is a gloomy gray-purple. They left the motel just as the sun was coming up, stopped for a greasy breakfast at a diner just outside Rockford, looked around at their fellow customers with suspicion. It’s easy to feel paranoid on the road. Every tenth car looks the same.

“Okay, so you follow this road for- well, actually, a pretty long time. We’re kind of just following the lake for a while.”

He hums in agreement and then they drive in companionable silence. They cycle through the whole of _Tonight I’m Yours_ until they’re back at _Young Turks_ again, at which point he switches it out for Wham. (He pretends he doesn’t hear Nancy groan.) Each town they pass on the way seems smaller than the last, like they’re getting closer and closer to the end of the line. The end of the world.

“Okay, do you wanna check the map again? I feel like we’re nearly here.”

She obliges, and then there’s a silence. A long silence.

“Nancy?”

She looks at him. “Steve, there’s… there’s something weird going on,” she says, and her voice is thin and quiet. She sounds _scared._

“What? What is it?”

“The map, it’s- it’s _changed._ ”

He stares at her. “What? That’s impossible, it can’t have-”

“-changed, I know, but it _has._ Steve, this is _weird._ ”

He looks at her, then the road, and swallows a sudden knot of unease. He makes a decision, and indicates right, and turns off onto a little dirt track he spotted. It leads right down to the icy pebbled shore. He stops the car a few yards above the water and turns off the engine. George Michael’s voice dies. (The car can’t be seen from the road down here. He’s not sure whether that was his intention or not.) “Alright, show me.”

She shows him. And he hasn’t been studying the map so intently as she has, but even he can see that it’s different. The route she traced with red marker no longer leads them down the shore of the lake - it leads them northwest, inland, closer to Canada. Last time he checked the red X was almost touching the blue of Lake Superior - now it’s an inch away.

“What the fuck,” he mutters. “What the _fuck-”_

He feels a sickening jolt of panic, crawling up his throat. Without thinking he drags himself out of the car and half-runs, half-falls down the slope towards the shore, a terrible spiralling confusion filling his head. Maps don’t change. They don’t- that’s not-

There’s such a thing as the law of physics. Steve may have gotten a D in science but he knows that much. Maps can’t redraw themselves on a whim. It’s impossible.

And everything impossible that’s ever happened around him-

Well. It’s all been the fault of the Upside Down. Which means that this- this is the fault of the Upside Down too. And it’s not over. Somehow, he doesn’t know how- somehow something weird’s going on again. And he was right to bring his nail bat. 

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nancy asks, as she comes to join him on the shore. The water is lapping at the pebbles, which crunch under his feet. “That this is-” she lowers her voice “-you-know-what?”

He nods silently, and stares out at the water. The horizon is so far away. The lake is dark and huge and suddenly it just feels like a barrier, a solid immovable wall. No escape that way; another exit cut off. He wouldn’t like to live up here. It’s bleak and frightening.

“It’s getting late,” she says, finally. “We should find somewhere to stay, unless you wanna sleep in the car.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t the Byers live somewhere up here? On the edge of the lake?”

She nods, slowly. “I think- they’re-” She’s frowning. “I can’t remember.”

“What?”

“I can’t remember where they moved to. I don’t- I don’t _know._ ” She looks at him with wide eyes; there’s panic in them. “Why don’t I know?”

He reaches out to her. She brushes past him and goes to stand at the very edge of the water, so it’s lapping at her shoes. She’s pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and is muttering something to herself; when he gets closer he realises she’s saying _Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota,_ over and over again. But her attempt at reminding herself clearly doesn’t work. After a while she throws her arms up and whispers “Shit,” staring out at the lake.

And then-

“Holy shit.”

Her tone has changed. He moves closer. “What?”

“Look, Steve- look-”

He looks where she’s pointing, and doesn’t see anything. She grabs him by the arm and pulls him into the spot she was standing in. He can feel her breath stirring his hair. Then she points to a spot on the horizon, near the shore, on the left-

There’s the shadow of a lighthouse. It’s dark and distant against the huge evening sky. He frowns at it. “Yeah, a lighthouse. And?”

She produces something from her coat pocket - her wallet. She opens it and shoves something from it at him, which he inspects with a frown. It’s a photo, a photo of Jonathan grinning bashfully at the camera and squinting in fall sunlight, with water glittering behind him. And then he studies it closer, and notices that in the background, across the water, there’s a tall, skeletal frame. A lighthouse.

He holds the picture up to compare. The same bony structure, like scaffolding, the same angles. The same lighthouse.

“That’s their town,” she whispers. “Just down the shore.”

They share a glance. And then without needing to speak, as one, they get back in the car, and he starts driving.

“Okay, we should be nearly there,” she says, after about fifteen minutes. It’s really beginning to get dark now. He gives the sky an uneasy glance, and then looks at the road ahead. It hasn’t changed. Still the lake on one side, the woods on the other. “Right? I mean, judging by the distance. I don’t trust the map.”

_Trust_ , like it’s evil. Like it’s out to get them. Maybe it is. He flexes his hand on the wheel- and the road begins to curve to the left. He slows. They don’t wanna go away from the lake, they know the town is sitting next to the lake, this isn’t-

His speed reaches a crawl. (The road is empty.) “What are you doing?” Nancy asks, shifting in her seat.

“The road’s taking us away from the lake,” he says.

“Yeah, so? Maybe it veers back around.”

He looks at her, and speaks softly. “Don’t you think that maybe if the map can change, the roads can too?”

She blanches. He parks the car and gets out, surveys the darkening road. She follows him, close behind, and when there’s an audible _click_ he realises she’s taken her gun out. He stops and goes back to the trunk, takes out his nail bat. If she gets a weapon, so does he. Who knows what they’re about to face.

When he returns to the middle of the road, Nancy is stood still, looking into the woods between the road and the lake with a strange look on her face. “Come here,” she says, and he obliges. But there’s nothing, not even when she nudges him into where she was standing. Just the darkening trees. “I thought I saw something- you can’t see it?”

He shakes his head. 

She takes a deep breath, audible in the windy silence. “I need you to trust me.”

“What?” but she’s already grabbed his arm, tugging him forward headlong into the forest and he’s half afraid - no, scratch that, terrified - that they’ll collide headlong with a tree. But they don’t. Because suddenly, _suddenly-_

The forest opens up into another road. 

And that _definitely_ isn’t normal. That _definitely_ isn’t in line with the laws of physics. He wonders what Dustin would say to that, or that smartass science teacher Mr. Clarke, who failed him twice because he never paid attention. They could use some of that science-ness right about now, he thinks, because Nancy’s smart but he’s not sure she’s into quantum physics. (Is that what they call it?)

She’s already walking down it, gun ready by her side, and all he can do is follow her. (Suddenly he knows what Jonathan feels like.)

After ten minutes the road curves, leads under a fence, but Nancy’s never been deterred by something so trivial as a fence. They read the sign: _GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. DANGER. KEEP OUT._ Then they look at each other.

“You think…?”

“Definitely.”

It doesn’t take long to find a tree they can climb. Steve helps Nancy up it; she drops down on the other side gracefully. He follows her with a grunt and then straightens up, already wielding his bat. 

The fence grows distant behind them as they continue to follow the road.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“I’m home!” Jonathan calls, dropping his car keys in the bowl beside the door. There’s no response. “Guys?”

“We heard you!” Will yells. 

He goes through to the living room and finds them sitting on the couch together, an all but empty packet of Magic Middles on the table, and _Star Trek_ flickering quietly on the TV. They both smile at him absently before looking back at the TV. “Hey, I love this episode, is this the one where-”

“Shh!” they both say, at the same time. For a second he forgets that they aren’t actually twins.

He watches the TV for a while. It’s one they’ve all seen before. They taped it to watch again, the last episode of the long-since aired season two, where the crew of the Enterprise go back in time and meet a nefarious figure they think is trying to blow up Earth in 1968. He was born in 1968. 

He’s watching the two cops get beamed up to the Enterprise and then straight back down, one of them murmuring “Charley…” in disbelief, when it hits him. This awful, crawling feeling in the pit of his stomach. He stops watching - all he can focus on is the feeling, the feeling that something bad has happened, or else is _going_ to happen-

He’s struck by the image of that fence, _GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. DANGER. KEEP OUT._ He doesn’t know why it appears in his head but it does. That fence and the darkness beyond it-

There’s something his mom’s taught him, time and time again. _Trust your gut._ It’s what she does, and maybe sometimes it leads her astray because she’s so nervous, on edge all the time, but sometimes it _doesn’t_ and for Jonathan-

For him, he thinks it’s one of those times.

Which is why he says quietly, “I have to go.” They look up at him in surprise but he’s already grabbing his keys and his coat and is out the door. Before he gets in his car he goes to the shed and grabs Lonnie’s old shotgun and a box of cartridges, which somehow didn’t get lost in the move. (He doesn’t want to shoot it. But he’s not ten anymore.) And then he leaves. He’s pushing the speed limit as he drives but he doesn’t care, not really. Some unknown urgency is making him thrum with adrenaline. He wishes he could beam himself there like in _Star Trek._

But then he makes it to the town limit, and then to the turning, and he doesn’t stop, just turns into the invisible road because he knows it’s there now. It can’t hide any longer. (Briefly he thinks he saw a car parked on the side of the road, a car he recognised, but then he’s haring down the road and he forgets all about it because the fence is coming up.)

He parks just around the curve and surveys the fence, looking for a way through. He finds one a few yards away from the road, a tear that looks like it was caused by some animal or another. He tries not to worry about that, and squeezes through.

Then he holds the shotgun ready and loaded. Its weight is terrifying, comforting and terrifying-

And he has no idea why he’s here.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“-a satellite? Seriously, Dustin, you can’t believe that’s gonna work-”

“Why wouldn’t it? Mr. Clarke said-”

“I call bull on Mr. Clarke! You’re obsessed with him! I don’t think we should have involved him in the first place-”

“Oh, so how else are you planning on finding your girlfriend? You just said the satellite idea was garbage, so do you have any other ideas?”

Mike falls silent. 

“I thought not,” Dustin says triumphantly. He doesn’t understand why Mike is being such a little asshole about Mr. Clarke. They can use him to help them without telling him about the whole thing, about El, about the Upside Down - doesn’t Mike get it? 

They dump their bikes on the Wheelers’ lawn and enter through the sidedoor. Dustin can tell Mike is furiously trying to think up a response, but he won’t be able to. Dustin has thought about this sideways and backwards. Mr. Clarke is their only option - because Mike is actually right, in a sense. El doesn’t have her powers anymore, so who knows if they’d be able to track her by satellite. Nevermind that they couldn’t get into international powers’ operating systems, because they may have smarts but resources are something they lack.

Then Mike suddenly stops in front of him, and Dustin collides with his back. “Why did you stop?” he grumbles, as he disentangles himself, only to see Mike’s mom watching them with her arms folded over her chest in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Hi, Mom,” Mike says. Somehow it sounds normal. (What are they in trouble for now-?)

“Michael… I have some questions.” She looks… scared? “And I’d like a straight answer, please.”

Oh god, this isn’t what he thinks it is, is it? He shares a glance with Mike, who looks equally nervous. How the hell are they gonna lie their way out of this one?

“I’ve been doing some- well, some digging. And what I’ve found out- I think you’re involved. So you can tell me the truth. You’re _going_ to tell me the truth.”

Dustin can hear Mike gulp.

“What really happened in 1983? When Will went missing, and there was that- that girl staying in our house?”

“It’s not-” Mike starts, but then a thought flashes across Dustin’s brain like lightning. He grabs Mike’s arm and tugs him to the side.

“Tell her,” he says.

“ _What?”_

“Tell her,” he repeats. “Your mom and Will’s mom are friends, right? Maybe she can help.”

“You think she knows where they went?” Mike sends an uncertain glance in his mom’s direction. Obviously there are two opposing forces warring inside him: the desire to conceal the truth, ingrained in them since the day they got Will back in 1983, and the desire to find and protect El. 

Honestly, it’s not surprising which one wins.

“Okay,” Mike says, as he goes back to face his mom. He’s taller than her now. “I’ll tell you. You may wanna sit down.”

So he tells her. Not all of it, not the gruesome details. But enough. Karen goes paler and paler and Dustin isn’t ashamed to admit that he feels just a tiny bit of relief that there’s another adult involved now. Now that the Chief is dead and Mrs. Byers is far away. Steve might be a good babysitter, as he describes himself, but he’s not exactly a mature adult.

“-and that’s why we need to find where the Byers moved. Do you know where they went?”

Her hand is covering her mouth. She’s silent for a few moments, staring into space.

“Mom?”

Her eyes snap to Mike. “I think I might do,” she says. “Not because Joyce told me, though I think she did. It’s just… Minnesota, right?” They nod. “Her aunt had a house in Minnesota, the north of Minnesota, really remote. Maybe… maybe that’s where they went.”

Mrs. Wheeler goes to find the address, and he and Dustin look at each other. Maybe it is. 

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

_“Ground floor is clear. You’re gonna want to come and see this, over.”_

Joyce meets Owens’ eyes over the radio; he nods. “Copy that.” Then he checks his gun, clicking the safety on and off, presumably ensuring it doesn’t jam. They didn’t give her or Murray one of their own. She’s not sure whether to be relieved or nervous about that. “You ready?” 

She swallows her fear. “Yeah.”

Murray nods too, and then they’re climbing out of the truck into the looming darkness of the peninsula. After the short, difficult climb up a snowy ridge, it becomes immediately apparent that something is wrong. The courtyard, which in the photos Owens showed them in the briefing was full of trucks and bustling with shoulders, is frighteningly empty. _Entrance is clear._ Maybe that’s not such a good thing.

Inside it’s dark and dingy. There’s a light flashing overhead, like a silent alarm. The soldiers are waiting for them - and they, too, look on edge. “It’s like they left in a hurry,” their leader says. “We got some dead bodies, sir.”

Joyce swallows painfully and glances up at Murray, whose face has gone white. This isn’t what they were expecting. They were meant to wait in the truck, while the soldiers carried out a quick, painless, _covert_ extraction. In-and-out, no one noticing they were here. Now there’s no one to notice them. They’re all gone; or all dead.

“Take half the squad to find out what happened, check the other levels,” Owens orders. “The rest of us will follow the plan.”

And so they head deeper into the prison. Joyce flinches at every sound, her every nerve on high alert, but nothing happens. Nothing jumps out at them. Because they’ve been warned. They’ve been warned that the Russians may or may not have a _demogorgon_. And if that’s what happened here-

They pass a particularly mangled corpse. Blood is smeared on the walls and the floor around it, and Joyce closes her eyes. (Bob’s blood looked the same, splattered on the big _HNL_ logo on the floor.) 

There’s a touch on her arm and she starts. “We’re here,” Murray says lowly. The soldiers have fanned out protectively around them as they face a doorway; Owens enters first. She follows him. It’s an office, little more than a room with a desk and a framed picture of Gorbachev on the wall. She stares at it as she remembers quite how far away from home she is.

Murray moves forward to sort through the files, as they’d agreed. Owens’ Russian, by his own admission, is “sub-optimal.” (Joyce’s is non-existent.) She circles the office with a frown, looking around it out of curiosity more than anything. On the desk there’s a framed picture, containing- is that _Marilyn Monroe_?

The incongruity of it catches her off guard and for a moment her fear is swallowed by confusion. But then Murray’s voice filters into her head and she looks around: “...is in English,” he’s saying. She comes closer and peers at the files - and he’s right. They’re in English.

“I don’t understand,” she says. “Why would they be in English?”

“I do,” Owens says. His voice is grave. “There’s, uh, there’s something we haven’t told you. You have to understand that it was for the right reasons at the time- there was no reason for you to know-”

“What is it?” she grits out, crossing her arms. She really can’t take anymore revelations.

“Dr. Martin Brenner is still alive. He defected to the Soviets only a few weeks after you got your son back.”

That’s how come they have the demogorgon, isn’t it. That’s how come- that’s how come they knew to come to Hawkins, that’s how come they opened the gate under the mall that Joyce killed (but didn’t) Hopper closing-

She wants to shout _why didn’t you tell me_. She wants to shout _so this is your fault, the government’s fault,_ America’ _s fault after all._ She wants to hit him. But she does none of these things; she just stares at him and closes her mouth. 

And then she can’t say anything, because Murray has slammed the desk in excitement and is yelling “I got it, I got him, I know which cell he’s in!”, and he’s practically dragging her down the corridor and down three flights of stairs and if she was looking at the ground she’d find bloody footsteps, but she’s not because her heart is racing and maybe, just maybe, they’ve _found_ him.

Hopper in high school, blond and smug. Hopper later on, tired and grieving - and the Hopper she knew the best, the one who’d share his cigarettes and let her cry on his shoulder when worrying about Will every second of every day just became _too much_. (The Hopper she struggles to square with, the one who was angry all the time and had a Tom Selleck mustache. The one she stood up, and maybe that’s her fault too. She doesn’t know.)

Which Hopper will she find now?

“This one,” Murray says breathlessly. They stop in front of a cell that’s just like all the others. A soldier tells them to stand back and kicks the door open, raising his gun-

Joyce takes a deep breath and moves forward-

This is it-

And the cell is empty.

The cell is empty. He’s not here. They haven’t found him. They haven’t _found_ him-

And in the distance, trembling through the grimy brick walls, she hears the screech of something inhuman.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits: [back in the USSR](https://open.spotify.com/track/0j3p1p06deJ7f9xmJ9yG22?si=rxeDEt1rQ_S2CUUz6F6mOQ) by the beatles. 
> 
> the star trek episode will and el watch is assignment: earth, which first aired in 1968. 
> 
> as always, let me know what you think and find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/joycefinkels) \+ [tumblr](https://palmviolet.tumblr.com/)


	4. The American

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Russia, Joyce faces something terrifying. Will and El discover they have a deeper connection than they thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a warning for referenced torture, gore, referenced suicide, and referenced nazism in this chapter.

“I don’t want to retreat into plant life, or have the same bad dream every night. I don’t want to watch a city burn because I was there.”  
– Jeanette Winterson, _The Agony of Intimacy_ (2010)

“How do we forgive ourselves for all of the things we did not become?”  
– Doc Luben, _14 lines from love letters or suicide notes_ (2014)

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia**  
**Late 1985**

In a bitter-cold Eastern peninsula of Russia, sixty-seven prisoners of the Soviet Union are building a railroad. The work is hard, and the snow never stops falling. It’s a state-supervised operation - of course it is, it’s the USSR - but there are only a few soldiers left now. The project had begun under the sharp eyes of a general but he stopped coming several weeks ago. Probably gone back to Moscow, to supervise remotely if at all. 

Even for Russia, it’s cold. Sometimes the unwary get frostbite. If it’s bad enough they shoot you on the spot, like a lame horse. The gloves stay on, you quickly learn. 

At night they lock them into sixteen-bed cells, and there too there are lessons to be learnt. That if you’re not big and tall then they’ll jump you for your smokes, and even if you are they’ll try it at least once. That everyone carries around at least one fork stolen from the dingy mess hall, and you’re a fool if you don’t. That contemplating stealing anything more dangerous than that doesn’t end well. That people only escape by facing down the wrong end of a Kalashnikov.

Hopper doesn’t know how long he’s been here. 

He’s stopped counting. He thinks it was Thanksgiving at some point, a while ago, because the woman serving the slop they call food, a brutal battleaxe of a woman, the only woman in the camp, had grinned at him toothlessly and said with her broken Russian accent _“There’s your turkey,”_ and then spat in it. It definitely wasn’t turkey.

He’s stopped thinking about home. It’s the only way to go on, really. Fill your head with daydreams and someone will take advantage of that, no question. He’ll be the next poor bastard facing down the barrel of the gun. 

One gray, frigid day, one in a long line of many, there’s an escape attempt. Hopper is minding his own business heaving his pickaxe with hands that blistered then callused and now don’t even hurt. Around him it’s silent save for the grunts of the men and the occasional bark from the dogs one soldier likes to keep, to scare the prisoners. They have vicious teeth. But it’s the soldier Hopper has nicknamed ‘Jaws’, because his teeth are even scarier, blackened and rotted away like in a horror movie, like he’s a corpse. It’s not exactly military standard but, Hopper figures, all the way out here none of that matters. Nothing matters except the snow, and the railroad, and somehow staying alive.

There’s a commotion that shatters the silence. A shout, a gunshot, and the sound of the dogs going into a furious frenzy. Hopper can’t help himself - he looks over. There’s someone lying dead in the reddening snow. Jaws is brandishing his Kalashnikov above him. Someone else is on his knees with his hands on his head - and Hopper recognises this guy. He’s two bunks away from him in their cell. 

Or at least, he was. He won’t last long now.

The foreman is watching coldly, silently. Jaws says something in Russian and the guy shakes his head. Then Jaws shoves him into the snow, face-down, and holds him there with a knee in his back and a hand on his head. After about a minute he starts to struggle. Clearly he’s running out of air. Drowning in snow must be an awful, freezing way to go. It takes a few more minutes, and then Jaws stands up and contemplates his still-twitching body. Then he shoots it twice. The shots echo around the icy valley and none of the men flinch. Hopper watches silently, hands stiff around the handle of his pickaxe. 

“Anyone else?” Jaws shouts, in crude English, like he’s referencing some movie. Maybe he is. Hopper’s found all his knowledge trickling out of his head. Jaws smirks and kicks the body over, then yells out the Russian command that Hopper’s learnt means _back to work._ Slowly, he turns back to hacking at the stone-

But now there’s a plan blossoming in his head. 

Because the foreman, some guy called Ilya, isn’t just the foreman. He runs this whole operation, as Hopper understands it. And he’s not a military guy. He’s a civilian, and he flinched. No one else flinched, but he flinched, sitting over there hunched in furs and smoking rapidly. He’s rarely even out here but today he is and he _flinched._

At the end of their long, awful, gruelling day, Hopper ignores his aching limbs and helps fold up Ilya’s table instead. Ilya, who was stacking up his papers with difficulty through his thick gloves, sits back and watches Hopper do it instead. “You’re keen,” he says. His English is surprisingly good, for way out here. 

Hopper grunts. “Got nothing better to do.”

“Still. You’re American, yes?” Ilya’s eyes are narrowed, looking him up and down. “Ride with me in the truck.” He can’t believe his luck. Five minutes and he’s already being promoted above the others, allowed to ride with the foreman instead of walking the long, cold mile back to the camp. 

Ilya is something of an America fanatic, it seems. He asks questions the whole way back, about Hollywood and Coca Cola and _the Lady of the Liberty_. Hopper has to repress a smirk as he answers them, with a voice cracked from disuse, because this was better than he could have hoped for in a million years. It’s not uncommon, he’s learning, for Soviets to admire America in secret. (Personally he doesn’t know what the hell they see in it.) And Ilya is _obsessed._

Two days later he moves Hopper into his secretary’s quarters, separate to the rest of the cells. When the current secretary protests, Ilya takes out his handgun and shoots him in the head. 

“Welcome to your new job,” he says. “I could use someone who speaks good English. Not like this _mudak_.” He casts a disdainful glance at the corpse at his feet.

Hopper swallows. He’s free of the daily shaved head to prevent lice, of the ever-present threat of shanking, of Jaws’ mouth full of decay, but Ilya isn’t exactly docile. He’ll have to watch his step. But equally-

Equally he’s one step closer to home. And he’s sworn he wouldn’t think of home, not till he’s nearly there, but he can’t help himself. He holds the faces of El and Joyce in his mind and thinks _I’m coming home. I’m coming home and nothing and no one is gonna fucking stop me, not this time._

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

** Early January, 1986 **

“You have a wife, American?”

Hopper stiffens, nearly choking on his cigarette. Laikas, not Camels. He doesn’t like them but they’re all he’s got. Ilya is sitting on his desk, smoke drifting from the cigarette in his own hand, a vague (and tricky?) smile on his face. 

“What?” Hopper manages, his pen stilling over the report he’s been absently filling in under Ilya’s instruction. 

“You know. You must have a wife. Blonde, like a pin-up, right? Little red skirt?” His grin is toothy. 

Hopper feels his stomach turn. He shakes his head. “Not- not in a while.” Diane was blonde, but she was no pin-up. She was elegant and smart. Grief-stricken, in the end. He burns with the urge to punch that grin away, but he forces himself to remain calm. He’d rather the wrong end of a Kalashnikov wasn’t involved in his escape plan, thank you very much.

“Ah, so you used to? Lucky for you. That you don’t anymore. My wife Svetlana-” Ilya shakes his head and shudders. “Still, American women, yes? Must be nice.”

Hopper just nods blandly. He turns his head back to his work, such as it is, and hopes that Ilya will leave him alone.

No such luck. “Do you know why I chose you?” Ilya says, leaning closer. He stinks of smoke, sweat, and vodka. Hopper shakes his head. “Because you don’t read Russian. You can match files to folders without knowing what’s in them. You can’t be- what is it. Nosy?” Ilya smirks.

Hopper looks at him steadily. If he’s hoping to foil Hopper’s hopes of escape, he’s mistaken. Hopper knew it would be hard. He knew all the files would be in cyrillic. It isn’t _about_ learning Ilya’s secrets. It’s about not being guarded so closely - it’s about being watched by one set of eyes, rather than twenty. 

When he doesn’t take the bait, Ilya sighs and leans back. “Are you a soldier, American? You are very… solid.”

Hopper tries to suppress his scoff and barely succeeds, and it turns into a mild coughing fit. (His lungs are weaker now, that’s true. He doesn’t feel _solid._ The work on the railroad has made him strong, but the food isn’t enough and the cold seeps into his very bones.) “I was, yeah.”

“Vietnam?” Ilya’s smile is mirthless. “We have met before, then. I signed off on tank shipments to North Vietnam.”

Of course he did. And Vietnam is the last thing Hopper needs to think about right now, really, because already he can feel the jungle green crowding at the edge of his vision and he has to _focus_ , goddamnit. He thinks of the box under the floorboards in the cabin, _VIETNAM_ in his hurried capital scrawl. And _SARA_ right next to it. 

And _HAWKINS LAB_ , too, the one that has El’s life up til 1983 stacked up neatly inside it. God, he hopes she’s okay. He hopes _it_ didn’t get her, in the summer. He hopes Joyce is looking after her. 

He hopes _Joyce_ is okay. Jesus. There were still Russians in that base when she closed the gate- God, what if- The thought of her facing someone like the Schwarzenegger lookalike-

But she’s okay. They’re both okay. They have to be. Hopper holds it in his chest and prays that it is true, because he doesn’t know how to do otherwise. He can’t live out the rest of his life in the gulag, not when they’re out there. Waiting. Thinking him dead. If he escapes, it won’t be down to him. It will be entirely them, he knows, their images in his mind - Joyce, that gently teasing smile, the way she looks at him like she _knows_ him inside out, and she does. He knows her too, and that’s the frightening part, that they know so much about each other and they’re so- so interlinked, and now they’re hundreds and hundreds of miles apart and she must think he’s dead.

And El. God, El. His _kid._ He has to get back to his fucking kid. She’s the reason he wakes up in the morning, even now. He hopes Mike, that little shit, is being nice to her. He hopes Joyce has taken her in. (If it’s Becky Ives or god forbid the state- no. Joyce is the only choice.) 

He goes through this thought cycle regularly, when he can’t shut it down fast enough. He usually winds up with the Byers and El living somewhere weird, like Maine, only they’re still not safe because the monster came after them and now he’s not there to protect them anymore, so it picks them off one by one-

This is why he tends not to think about it.

“Dime for your thoughts,” Ilya says, grinning. Does he ever stop grinning?

“It’s penny,” Hopper says instead.

“What?”

“Penny for your thoughts, y’know?” He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No, thank you for telling me. I like to know these things.” From anyone else it would be sarcastic; it would be the warning signs of a gun to the head. But this is Ilya, and Ilya treats him with strange deference at times. “There’s something you’d like to know, also.” Ilya is also a smug piece of shit, who likes to tease.

“What’s that?” he asks, barely lifting his eyes. He’s so tired.

“Pack a bag. We leave tonight.”

A bolt of tension goes through him and he sits up ramrod-straight. Leaving? Leaving for where? This royally screws him up, really. He was just beginning to learn the patterns of the guards- the weak points- 

“You recall the prison?” Of course he does. He recalls the beatings, the crippling loneliness of solitary. The way he barely had a second to think before he was dragged away from the gate, still bloody, still in that Soviet uniform, Joyce’s agonised image still dissolving behind his eyelids. (The way the darkness closed over his head for only a moment, a long, silent millisecond, before he was opening his eyes and he was in goddamn fucking _Russia._ That isn’t how the Upside Down works, he wants to protest, vainly. It isn’t fair. But no one’s listening, and there are no rules.)

The proverbial penny drops. “Why are we going there,” he asks flatly - more like says. He barely has the energy for curiosity.

“Because I’ve been promoted. And we have bigger- what is it? Bigger fish to fry?”

“Yeah,” he says. His mouth is dry. “That’s it.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

**Near Duluth, Minnesota**  
**Sunday, January 19th, 1986**

El is very good at knowing when she’s dreaming. It’s a skill she’s always had, but she’s had the chance to hone it over the last few months, where every other night she’s been swept into that neon-lit parking lot with Joyce sobbing in front of her and Hopper’s image disintegrating before her eyes. She would whisper to herself _this is a dream_ , and she’d let that little seed grow until she could tell the dream from reality again. It didn’t help all that much - Hopper still died, she still couldn’t stop it - but it prevents her feeling the raw agony night after night after night.

Tonight, she knows she’s dreaming as soon as she steps out into the darkness, as soon as Starcourt assembles itself around her and Joyce’s lonely figure takes its first shuddering step towards her. She shakes her head. She’s not doing this, not tonight. (A few tears spring to her eyes anyway; angrily she wipes them away.)

“El,” the phantom of Joyce calls, but she turns away. She turns away and that’s when the dream diverges from its usual path. Because the mall dissolves into solid darkness - darkness she hasn’t seen since July. Darkness that sends a thrill of hope down her spine.

“Hello?” she calls out into the black. The not-water ripples soundlessly beneath her feet. “Joyce?” She doesn’t dare call out for anyone else. There are only two names on her tongue: Joyce and _Dad._ To be met with silence by the latter-

This doesn’t feel so much like a dream anymore.

“...the hell is he, then? Where the hell is _everyone?_ What is this? C’mon, you’re supposed to be the guy with all the answers, answer that.”

El turns. It’s Joyce, speaking furiously to nothing. Her long hair is tied up but messy; she’s dressed in dark, wintry clothes. She listens to someone respond, someone out of El’s reach, and visibly clenches her jaw.

“You brought us out here- you brought _me_ out here- to _Russia_ \- you took me away from my _kids_ for this and now- what. Now that’s it? Now we’re- we’re just giving up? You said he was alive. You said we’d find him. _You said we’d find him._ ” El frowns and draws closer. There’s desperation in Joyce’s eyes. Her voice cracks: “How do we even know he was here?”

A silence.

“You saw his name on the file? In English, it wasn’t just a mistranslation-” she winces, like someone’s just snapped at her “-so you’re sure it said Hopper?”

El’s heart drops to her toes. _What?_ Hopper, _it said Hopper_ , _you said he was alive-_

It can’t be. It _can’t_ be. She’s dreamed about that night enough times that she remembers its every detail with absolute clarity; the distant sirens, the stink of the wet tarmac from the fine rain that soaked her to the bone and left her shivering. The agony in Joyce’s face, and the way she wouldn’t let go of El’s hand, not even when the EMTs stitched up Joyce’s forehead and wrapped her broken ribs. _You’re going to stay with us, okay? I don’t want you to ever worry about not having a home._ Certainty, even then. Hopper there one moment and gone the next like he was never even here, like she never even had a home, like it melted into dust just like he did. He’s dead - otherwise, where has he been? Why wouldn’t he come looking for her? Why wouldn’t he-

“So- what. They took him somewhere else? Or he’s-”

Joyce’s hand, faintly trembling, comes up to cover her mouth. Her eyes are wide and scared, and then suddenly she whips around as if at a distant sound. Forgetting herself, El reaches out to her.

“Oh god, it’s coming…” and then she fades into ash at the touch of El’s fingers. El lets out a scream of frustration and fear, too, because wherever Joyce is (Russia, she remembers), she’s in trouble. Something’s happening and Hopper-

This time she tries it. She has to try it. She has to know. “Dad,” she whispers, though she doesn’t need to. She likes to say it. She wishes she could have said it to him, when he was here. (Maybe now she can.) 

But there’s nothing. Only the blackness of the void. She can’t find him.

When she wakes there are tears tracing down her cheeks and her mouth tastes like cotton, and her head is resting on Will’s shoulder. She pulls herself upright- and then she feels it. Wetness, dripping from her nose. Hardly daring to hope, she wipes at it with her finger. It comes away bloody.

And when she looks around at Will, still slumped asleep on the couch, she sees that his nose is bleeding too.

“Will,” she says. “ _Will.”_ She shakes his arm; he wakes up with a start. He frowns at her, his eyes flickering to her nose, and then wipes at his own. 

“Holy shit,” he whispers. “Did you-”

“I was in the Inbetween. Will, I saw Joyce. I think-”

“Your powers? Are they back?” He sounds excited. Excited and scared.

She aims her gaze at the light switch and imagines flicking it on; nothing happens. She feels a sting of disappointment - she’s still weak, still useless, then - but she shoves it down. They have more important things to talk about, because- “Your mom is in Russia. And I think Hopper-” She swallows, hard. Will is staring at her, transfixed. “She was talking about him. I think they’re looking for him. I think he’s alive.”

“Did you see him?”

She shakes her head. That echoing silence, emptiness, is still resounding in her head. But that seed of hope, planted by Joyce’s furious voice, is stubborn. She wants this so badly. 

“How do you know it wasn’t a dream?”

She shakes her head again. “I _know._ It felt… different. And I think it’s- it’s you.” She indicates his nose; he looks at her, startled. “Somehow- your powers, they… helped me.”

“Okay, so…” His eyebrows crease together, like they always do when he’s concentrating. In the background she’s aware that the _Star Trek_ tape they’d watched as ‘research’ has looped and is playing again at low volume. “Say I have the ability to cast Teleport, right, like we talked about. And you- you can cast Scrying spells. You’re saying that you can do that because of me? I somehow… bring back some of your powers?”

She nods uncertainly. She doesn’t understand the DnD analogy, though she knows enough that at least she can recognise it as that. She tries an analogy of her own: “I think it’s like… how we learnt in science class. Like you’re a- a cat- catalyst.”

There’s a spark of understanding in his eyes. “I can create a reaction but I’m not involved in it. Yeah, maybe- maybe that’s it. So you think if we- if we worked together- maybe you could find Hopper?” The last part is barely a whisper, like he doesn’t dare to speak it out loud.

She nods silently. She doesn’t dare either. He gets up and turns the TV to static, finds her a blindfold. Then they sit side by side on the floor in front of the TV. Her heart is racing. He takes her hand and she grips his tightly - and uses her other to tug her blindfold down. 

And then she’s in the empty dark again, calling out. “Dad,” she says. She pictures him, his tall presence, that mustache that she thinks looks like a caterpillar on his face. Blue eyes and that grin he reserves only for her. She pictures him and wills him to come into view, but he doesn’t. She can’t find him. ( _You said we’d find him-_ )

After what feels like years of searching she brings herself out of it, yanks the blindfold off in frustration. “Anything?” Will asks. She shakes her head. “Wait, you- when you find people, like when you found me, you have to have an image of them, don’t you? The first time.”

She nods, not understanding.

“What if because it’s been so long, your powers aren’t… they aren’t _used_ to being used. You have to treat them like it’s all new, even if _you_ know who you’re looking for, because maybe- maybe your powers don’t.”

Oh. Her powers are a part of her, aren’t they? But maybe- maybe they’re not anymore. Maybe they’re just borrowed - borrowed from Will. Maybe she does need a photo. 

She stands up and hurries to their room. The polaroid of Joyce and Hopper as teenagers is tacked to her wall beside a photo of the party and a poster of Wonder Woman Max gave her before they left; she grabs the polaroid and goes back out to the living room. “Here,” she says. _This has to work._

They sit down again but this time she’s clutching the photo, as well as Will’s hand. Her thumb traces carefully over Hopper’s outline as she closes her eyes.

This time, there’s something different about the dark. It’s still black and empty but it’s not silent, not anymore. There’s faint music drifting over the not-water, distant and muffled, like it’s coming from another room. It’s like the music Joyce listens to sometimes: jaunty and old-fashioned. There’s the buzz of people talking, too, but El can’t make out any of what they’re saying.

Hesitantly she steps forward. Her heart is pounding irrationally, and she’s reminded of a long time ago in another town, when Papa asked her to find not someone but some _thing._ But this isn’t like that. She’s here to help Hopper - _Dad_ \- not Papa. Papa’s dead.

“Hello?” she tries, quietly. Nothing happens - but is it her, or does the music get louder? She can make out faintly muffled words now: 

     _Tell you a story_  
_Happened long time ago_  
_A-little bitty pretty one_  
_I've been watchin' you grow_

She’s going to find him here, she’s sure of it. She’s _sure_ of it. She’s so sure of it that all at once the darkness falls away like a curtain and she’s in a hall filled with people dancing in old-fashioned clothes in pastel colors like candy. It’s lively, vibrant, and when she looks up there’s a banner strung from wall to wall: _Congratulations, Hawkins High Class of ‘66!_

As she looks about in wonder she becomes suddenly aware of something out of place. A dark spot among the pretty yellows and oranges and pinks. She frowns and focuses on it-

And for the second time in two hours the floor drops out from beneath her feet. 

It’s Hopper. Her Hopper, not the teenage Hopper from the photo, not the Hopper that belongs here in 1966. He’s grizzled and lean, head shaven, eyes sharp and lonely. “Dad,” she whispers, and his eyes snap to her.

“El,” he says, just as the scene dissolves around her and leaves her alone in the black once more.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

**Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia**  
**Early January, 1986**

The prison is just the same as he remembers it. A sprawling campus of ugly gray buildings topped with permanent snow, surrounded by the mountains that loom up like teeth. He swallows a grimace as he follows Ilya inside; a guard salutes Ilya, and then frowns at him. He’s not surprised. Ilya hasn’t even bothered to handcuff him, which should fill him with hope but instead does the opposite, because it means Ilya is certain there’s no escape.

The last time he was here- well. They broke three ribs and gave him pneumonia before they sent him off to the labor camp, where he spent three weeks in the medbay too sick to move. _Who do you work for_ was a favorite question. It was only when he came up with the _Department of Energy_ as an answer that they decided not to kill him. Maybe they thought he’d make a good hostage; maybe they thought they could get more information from him. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that one day they were torturing him and then one day they stopped and sent him off to do back-breaking work that has ironically made him stronger than he ever was before.

The guards treat Ilya with deference. He’s clearly in charge, top-dog, trusted by the higher-ups to oversee things on this little peninsula hundreds of miles from Moscow - yet he has a framed picture of Marilyn Monroe on his desk. Hopper can’t stop staring at it, at Marilyn’s puckered red lips so incongruous with the grim surroundings. The whole thing is bizarre.

“You like her?” Ilya says, as he props his feet on the desk and indicates the picture. “Wait until you see my car.”

He slides a cigarette between his teeth and offers Hopper the pack. He accepts - what else is he gonna do? - and sits down in the chair opposite after Ilya lights it for him. “What’re we doing here?” he dares to ask. His voice is getting rough from disuse.

Ilya doesn’t answer right away. He flips through some files on his desk and takes a few puffs of his cigarette, and then looks at him frankly. “The last time you were here you told my men you worked for the Department of Energy. Is that true?”

Hopper narrows his eyes. In a manner of speaking, yes. Not completely. It’s the state that signed his paychecks, that’s true, but it was _Police Chief_ that was listed on his tax forms. His work for the Lab was kind of pro bono. “Yes,” he settles on.

Ilya leans forward. “I did not make you my assistant because I liked the way you stacked up my papers. I made you my assistant because if what you say is true then you are… uniquely placed. I know what the Department of Energy did in 1983.”

Of course he does - how else did the Russians know to build a gate in Hawkins? - but it still makes his heart thud in his chest. Somehow he’s been caught up in what is quite literally a new dimension of the Cold War. “What did they do?”

Ilya rolls his eyes at him. “Don’t… what is it? Play dumb?” He nods. “I’m going to show you something, American.” Ilya stands up and leaves the office - Hopper has no choice but to follow. They walk down five long hallways and two flights of stairs and then they’re facing an empty cage in the middle of a room, and the floor is stained with blood.

“What is this?” he asks, quietly.

Ilya just nods to it. “Watch.”

He watches, because there’s nothing else he can do. Distant yelling reverberates through the walls, gets louder and nearer, and then a poor unfortunate is being shoved through the gate into the cage, and locked in. Hopper stares at him, meets his eyes. He’s emaciated and terrified. Another prisoner, just like Hopper was (is?). He remembers back when he was here, the way they’d come for people and take them away apparently randomly, and every day they didn’t choose him he counted as a miracle.

Now, he’s seeing exactly what they did with those they took.

Everything is silent for a moment, a long moment. He glances at Ilya and then back at the man, because is something supposed to happen? The man is panting with terror.

And then all at once there’s a grating screech of metal as a gate opens in the wall, facing into the cage. Hopper didn’t notice it before. There’s a guard operating a mechanism in the corner, turning a wheel to open the gate ever further. His mouth is open in a grin, exposing rotten teeth, and with a sick jolt Hopper recognises him as Jaws. The man is begging now, his Russian thick and hoarse and _terrified._ The room stinks of sweat and fear.

“What…”

“Watch,” Ilya says again in response, without looking at him. His face is serious and unsmiling.

Hating himself, Hopper watches.

The gate opens. Slowly, achingly slowly, there’s the sound of footsteps. But not human footsteps. The footsteps of something bigger, deadly. Monstrous. In his chest he knows what it is before it comes into the light - and then it does, and all his worst fears are confirmed.

The demogorgon, white and sinuous, opens its faceless maw and roars. 

Hopper looks away. He can’t bear to watch. He knows what will happen, he’s seen it before. Seen Bob Newby torn to shreds on the _HNL_ logo emblazoned on the floor. (Joyce screaming herself hoarse, sobbing until she couldn’t stand on her own, her tiny frame bucking against his with surprising strength as she fought to die by Bob’s side-)

Now he gets why the floor is stained with blood. Now he gets why Ilya chose him. _Department of Energy._ Somehow they know about what happened; somehow they’ve got a piece of it for their own. It’s happening again. 

Without even thinking he turns and grabs Ilya by the collar. “You need to kill it,” he hisses. “Before it escapes and kills us.”

Ilya looks remarkably unruffled. He shoves Hopper back and smoothes down his uniform. “It’s not going to escape. I understand your concern. The one you encountered could… how do you say it… cross worlds. This one-” he looks back at it and Hopper flinches at the sight, at the blood spraying the walls “-it cannot.”

“How?” he whispers. He doesn’t understand. _Where’s the gate_ , is his first thought, because he knows the demogorgon can’t be alive without a gate and El and Joyce and her family- they aren’t safe if there’s a gate. Escaping feels more and more urgent.

“You experienced the… opening in your town of Haw- Hawkins, correct? That is how you arrived here.”

He nods.

“But we created an opening here in Kamchatka too. Our scientists entered the- sorry, the _other_ world. They took samples, they returned, and they created-”

“The demogorgon,” he murmurs. 

Ilya looks at him with interest. “Is that what you call it? The _demogorgon._ I like it. Yes, we created it. But by the time we created it- our opening… how do you call it… it went wrong. Malfunctioned. We no longer had access.”

_What?_ No gate here in Russia, is that what he’s hearing? But if there’s no gate here… “When was this?” he manages to ask.

Ilya frowns. “What you would call August.”

August. So they created the demogorgon after the gate in Hawkins was closed, after the gate here was closed… 

So there has to be another one.

Or does there? If it’s true what Ilya is saying… that the demogorgon can’t teleport itself, can’t shift between here and the Upside Down, then maybe… Maybe it’s not tied to the Upside Down. Maybe it doesn’t need a gate. Maybe Hopper doesn’t need to panic quite so much, because a demogorgon is one thing but a gate is quite another. 

He’s not stupid, however. He refuses to believe that the Russians can contain it. They have for this long but it will go wrong, he knows. It always does. They’ll get arrogant, just like Brenner got arrogant, just like Owens got arrogant…

And then there’ll be quite literally hell to pay.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

** Monday, January 20th, 1986 **

There’s water dripping from a hairline crack in the ceiling. _Drip. Drip._ Joyce stares at it and wonders if it’s healthy that her heart is beating at a faster rate.

She’s found a hiding place. For now. 

One of the soldiers, one of the younger ones, is with her. They’re hunched under a stairwell listening to the yells of the scattered squadron, sporadic gunfire, that awful screeching that brings her right back to another time, another place. She should have known this would happen. She should have _known_ this would happen, right from the very moment Owens sat her down in the diner and told her calmly _we need you to come to Russia_. (She’s not sure what help she’s providing.)

Guns are useless on it, she knows this too. She knows her son and his girlfriend caught it in a bear trap and set it on fire, and she knows it survived until El crumbled it into pieces that fluttered off in the wind. 

Maybe it got Hopper.

And now it’s going to get her too. It’s probably already killed Owens, killed Murray… When it burst upon them, still standing shell-shocked in that hallway wondering helplessly where Hopper had gone, they’d all scattered in different directions. It’d be a miracle if they’re both still alive.

Her foot is getting cramp. She shifts awkwardly, attempting to conceal the faint trembling in her hands that will no doubt make the soldier beside her scoff and think _great, she’s a nervous wreck, why did we bring her again?,_ because she’s asking herself the same question - but then her eyes fall on him and she realises that he’s shaking too.

“Hey,” she says. She keeps her voice soft, both because of what’s hunting them and because she doesn’t want to startle him.

He looks around sharply anyway. Jesus, he’s young. Only slightly older than Jonathan, she thinks. Cheeks still round with youth, eyes wide and terrified. He’s gripping his submachine gun like a vice. 

“What’s your name?” she asks, gently.

“Asch,” he says. “Corporal Asch.” She looks at him silently for a moment; he seems to cave. God, he’s so young. “Joe Asch.”

“Okay, Joe. How are you doing?”

He stares at her like a rabbit, a deer in headlights, stricken. She supposes they don’t teach that sort of thing to young soldiers. They don’t ask them _how are you doing_ , and they certainly don’t tell them how to respond. Is this the first time he’s been in… well, an active combat scenario? (Even calling it that makes her heartbeat stutter. God, what has she gotten herself into?) He’s silent for a good while, before speaking with a voice that cracks and stutters. “This isn’t what they trained us for,” he says. “This isn’t- they never told us what we’d be facing-”

Jesus. Of course they didn’t. “Listen to me, okay? I’ve seen this thing before. It’s- it’s hard to kill. But not impossible,” she adds, when he looks horrified. “We’re gonna get out of this.” 

She hates herself for saying it, on some level. Because it’s not that simple, and it’s highly unlikely they’re gonna get out of this. The demogorgon is blocking their way to the exit and the thing is damn difficult to kill, not unless you’ve got a teenager with superpowers on your side. And this time they don’t. 

He looks at her with haunted eyes. “But we’re not here to kill it,” he says. She stares at him. There’s a sinking feeling in her gut. “We’re here to take it back with us.”

Her chest tightens like a vice and for a moment it feels like the world is spinning and blurring around her, like she’s weightless and lost. She chokes out a breath as she feels a hand on her arm - “Ma’am,” Joe is saying, voice worried. With an effort she swallows the sudden wave of abject terror.

“‘Take it back with us’,” she repeats tonelessly. _Take it back with us._ Oh god, she’s so stupid. She’s so fucking stupid. 

“Yeah,” he says. He looks at her nervously, like he’s afraid she might lash out, or else shatter into a thousand pieces. (How does she always end up making people look at her like that?) He fidgets with his gun. “I’m not even meant to be on this mission, I’m nowhere near senior enough- but Owens likes me, so…”

Owens has brought them here to capture the demogorgon. And what that sentence really means, if you translate it into common sense, is _Owens has brought them here to die._

Her breath catches at the thought. She looks at the dripping water and wonders if it leads to an escape, if the water is melted snow, or if it’s just faulty plumbing and they’re still miles underground. She’s never been claustrophobic but now it feels like the walls are closing in.

And then there’s a sound, different to the others. A metallic scratching sound, like something dragging against metal grating. The stairs. Something’s coming down the stairs.

The stairwell suddenly feels like the worst possible place to hide. The footsteps - though they’re not footsteps, not really, she knows that with a dreadful certainty - come ever closer. Her heart has caught in her throat. Out of the corner of her eye she sees that Joe is trembling again; she lays a hand on his arm. He shoots her a look that’s half uncomfortable, half grateful, and absently she thinks as the _thing_ comes ever closer that if more of the young men in this world had good mothers then maybe all these horrible things wouldn’t happen. (Not that that’s an excuse. Not that she wouldn’t kill Brenner for the things he’s done if he wasn’t dead already, mother or no.)

They can’t run. She knows what happens if you try to run. _(Bob-!)_

_It’s coming._

She takes a deep breath. Its claws - claws? - click on the steps, step by step by step. Joe is bracing himself beside her; she can feel his muscles tensing under her hand. She shakes her head silently. _Don’t do it._ She knows what happens to heroes. _(Bob…)_

It makes those sounds, those low, threatening growls that vibrate in her chest, and now it’s down the stairs. She can see its bony, sinuous legs. She bites her lip to keep herself from screaming. And it comes ever closer-

She’s no stranger to the sound automatic weapons make when they’re fired, not anymore. But it still seems shatteringly loud when Joe rushes to his feet and opens fire on the monster, screaming himself hoarse. Round after round ricochets. The demogorgon snarls, brings itself up to its full height. At least eight feet, it makes Joe look like a doll. He looks even more like a doll when its face opens up, swallowing each pitiful bullet, and tears into him like he’s made of paper.

She does scream then. It tears itself from her throat and she slaps a hand over her mouth, scrabbling to move further back, away from the blood and the gore and the monster’s savage teeth, but it’s too late, it heard her, it’s _coming for her-_

Joe’s body, all but cleaved in two, falls limply to the floor. The demogorgon is stalking towards her slowly but surely. The submachine gun has clattered down the hallway, too far for her to reach. She bites down on her hand as a sob rises up in her throat and tastes blood - but she keeps herself silent, out of some desperate hope that the demogorgon won’t find her. It’s blind. Isn’t it? _Isn’t it?_

Closer, ever closer. Its claws click on the floor and its face is dripping with blood that looks black in the harsh yellow light. It’s so close now that blood drops onto the floor right in front of her, so close that a spot falls on her pants. She’s face to face with it. 

Up close its skin is slimy, glistening and thick. It has no eyes. Just that horrible bloodstained skin. It opens its mouth in a snarl and then she’s facing its rows and rows of teeth, sharp and glinting, deadly and ready to tear her to pieces and she’s going to die here, isn’t she- she’s going to die here in the bowels of a Soviet prison with no one except a teenage corporal’s corpse and her children don’t even know where she is, they think she’s in Minneapolis because she _lied_ to them- chasing some stupid dream that’s probably not even true because Owens lies, Owens lied about what they’re doing here and now-

Now she’s going to die here-

The demogorgon doesn’t move.

It looms over her, staring at her sightlessly, its gaping maw wide open. She wants to close her eyes but she can’t. She can’t tear her gaze away from it; she’s transfixed. They look at each other for what feels like hours. She can feel blood running down her arm from where she broke the skin, but she doesn’t move to wipe it away. The stench of the monster’s breath is making her head swim. 

And then-

And then.

It turns away.

The click of its claws recedes. It doesn’t even touch Joe’s ruined body, as she thought it would. It leaves. It turns its back on her and _leaves_.

She lets out the sob she’s been holding in; it emerges ragged from her lungs. She’s shaking so hard she can barely stand up. But she does, with an effort. She drags herself over to Joe’s body, feeling all the breath rush from her body at the sight of it. She looks at him and he- he died the way Bob died, but he’s so young and all she can see is Jonathan. All she can see is- is Jonathan, bloody and broken-

_We’re gonna get out of this._

_You act like you’re all alone out there in the world, but you’re not._

_I will never, ever let anything bad happen to you ever again._

A litany of broken promises.

_(We’re gonna find him-)_

She breaks down and weeps.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

** Fourteen Hours Earlier **

He’s sitting down to a meal of indiscernible nature - some sort of brown stew, as most of his meals out here have been - when he hears the alarms. He sits there for a moment, spoon poised, as he waits to see if it’s just a drill.

It’s not a drill.

There are people yelling outside, footsteps running past, and is that gunfire? He tenses. He’s been left in a cell a few hallways down from Ilya’s office; there’s a guard sitting here watching him eat. “What’s that?” he risks asking.

The guard looks at him blankly. (He doesn’t speak a word of English; Hopper has discovered this over the past few days.) But he’s saved from miming to get his point across, because the next burst of gunfire is louder. The guard moves to the door, unlocks it, and peers out, his rifle poised in his hands. (A Kalashnikov AK-47: Hopper’s been eyeing it for the past hour.)

There’s distant shouting in Russian, more gunfire. He sets his tray down and stands up. (This could be his _chance-)_

And then he hears it. A far-off screech, violent and otherworldly. The demogorgon. Holy shit, the demogorgon. It’s escaped.

This is definitely his chance - because if nothing else, if he doesn’t escape now he’s gonna die here. The guard is still leaning out of the open door. He grabs him and slams him against the wall before he can raise his rifle, which clatters to the floor. The guard follows it, knocked out cold. Hopper considers him a moment before stripping him of his uniform and donning it himself - after all, it worked before.

Then he grabs the Kalashnikov and leaves the cell.

He can’t fuck this up. He has to get out now, today, because if he’s caught then he won’t get another chance. He’ll get the escape he wanted, sure, but it’ll be facing down the barrel of a rifle just like the one he’s carrying. 

The lights are flickering above him. He heads down the corridor with heart pounding, sure with every corner he turns that this will be it, the demogorgon will be waiting with those threefold slathering jaws- but he makes it to the office. It’s empty, thank god. He roots through the drawers until he finds what he’s looking for - car keys. He clenches them in his fist as he feels, for the first time in a long time, a real sting of hope. _Wait until you see my car._ Well, he’s about to. A quick check of the map in another drawer tells him where to find it.

Then he shoves the keys in his pocket and holds the rifle ready as he steps out into the hallway. A few guards run past and he tenses, but they pay him no mind. They’re shouting at each other in breathless, terrified Russian. _This is what you get_ , a more ruthless part of him thinks. (That damp cloth on his face, his lungs contracting hopelessly as they drowned him in plain air. The bloody desperation of the man sacrificed to the beast. _This is what you get._ It’s a little satisfying, he’s not gonna deny it.)

He follows the route the map told him, up two stairwells and down countless more hallways, each dingy, each silent save for the blaring alarm. He can no longer hear any shouting, and the gunfire has stopped. He’s not stupid enough to believe they’ve killed it. More likely, it’s killed them. 

He’s nearly there. God, he’s nearly there, and he hasn’t come across anyone at all. It fills him with unease, because it can’t be this easy. No way can it be this easy. 

And then there’s more gunfire up ahead. His every muscle tenses; he readies the rifle. It’s been a while since he’s shot one - shot anything. He hopes his aim is still good. If this is the demogorgon - well. It’s blocking his exit. (It’s blocking his way to Joyce, and to El. He’s got no mercy left.)

He steps around the corner-

And there it is.

Huge and white and alien. It’s crouched over a ruined mess that was once a Soviet soldier; there’s blood on the walls. The hallway is a massacre, littered with half eaten corpses. Hopper presses himself against the wall and swallows his panic. Is there another way through? There’s gotta be another way through. This isn’t-

“American,” someone hisses, and he knows that voice. He turns to see Ilya propped against the wall between two lifeless bodies. There’s blood on his face.

Hopper shakes his head. No. He’s gonna walk away and find another way around. He doesn’t need-

There’s a sick squelching sound from the direction of the feasting demogorgon as it bites down on some organ or other. Nausea rises up inside him but he stamps it down. Ilya is looking at him desperately, face white. Is he serious? There’s no way Hopper is rescuing him from this. This is _his_ goddamn fault-

The demogorgon has gone silent. Hopper risks a glance at it and then jumps back, all the air leaving his lungs. It’s facing them now. Its blind, bloody face is cocked in their direction - no. Ilya’s direction. Hopper’s off to the side, out of range. He could leave right now. He could leave right now and be safe.

The demogorgon leaps-

And his trigger finger moves of its own accord. Three rounds, four rounds. The demogorgon flinches back, but the bullets do nothing to pierce its hide. Still, they delay it. He empties half a magazine into it before darting forward and dragging Ilya out of the circle of bodies; he shoves him forward and tells him to _“Run!”_ and he does. Hopper is hot on his heels because now the demogorgon’s angry, and it’s coming after them. Shit. 

A strange part of him is grateful to the Soviets, because without the railroad he’d never be fit enough to run this fast. Ilya is slower, panting behind him, but Hopper has expended his reserves of altruism for the day. If Ilya wants to die, let him. 

Oh, _Christ,_ it’s right behind them. It’s _coming for them_ and is Hopper really gonna die here tonight because he saved some Russian bastard’s life? Is he really? (Joyce would be proud of him, though. So would El. It was their faces in his mind when he did it.)

Round another corner and suddenly it’s silent behind them. Where’s it gone? Hopper risks a glance over his shoulder and finds the hallway empty. No sign of the monster. Ilya is breathing hard and dripping blood as he moves. “We lost it…” he says.

Hopper shakes his head. “No way.”

“Then where is-”

He’s interrupted by the arrival of another soldier - and it’s Jaws. _Fuck._ He starts addressing Ilya in rapid Russian before apparently noticing Hopper, and then his face twists into something dangerous. “What is this?” he says, in a drawling Russian accent, thicker than Ilya’s. “Escape plan? Take boss hostage, yes?”

Hopper shakes his head but Jaws is already raising his own Kalashnikov, and maybe this is where his escape dies. A crushing sense of defeat swallows him up- but then it’s replaced by fear.

The flickering of the lights, which Hopper has all but stopped noticing, goes dead. They stand in pitch black for a moment. 

Then there’s a horrible _crack_ , and Hopper suddenly remembers everything Nancy told him about the beast. Oh, _shit._ Jaws either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care; his rifle is still raised, glinting dark in the gloom. “You come with me,” he says, as a looming black shape takes form behind him.

Hopper’s ready to make a snappy response but he doesn’t, he’s not James Bond, and as the demogorgon’s dripping maw crushes Jaws’ skull it’s all he can do to turn and fucking _run._ He runs as fast as his legs will carry him down three hallways and a flight of stairs before he feels even slightly able to turn and check it’s not following him.

To his alarm, Ilya has kept pace with him. He’s panting and there’s blood on his mouth but he’s still alive, still here. God, if he even _tries_ to prevent Hopper escaping after all this-

They’re by the garage, he recognises suddenly. There’s a sign on the wall in cyrillic but he doesn’t need to read it to know where they are. Escape is so close he can almost taste it. He strides into the garage, suddenly confident. It’s empty - except for one car. One shiny, pristine gray Chevrolet Corvette C3. 

It matches the keys in his pocket.

“You’re right,” he says, turning to Ilya with a grin. Suddenly there’s a thrill pulsing through his veins - some of it’s adrenaline, yes. But a lot of it’s hope. “That is a goddamn nice car.”

“Take me with you,” Ilya says. “I hate it here- they’ll kill me when they realise what happened- let me defect, I have secrets-”

Hopper considers him for a moment. Smirnoff take two, except a lot less rosy-cheeked and a lot more pathetic. And he speaks English, which is a plus. But Hopper works better alone, always has. Ilya would be a liability and a half.

“Stay here,” he says. “You can tell them it’s my fault, if you want. Or you can find someone else to defect to.”

Ilya considers him helplessly as he vaults into the car. He puts the key in the ignition and starts it - and it purrs under his touch. God, this is a nice car. The front of the garage is open already, facing out on the late afternoon sky. He checks the glovebox and finds a pair of aviator sunglasses. He dons them and grins, because Ilya sure did want to live the American Dream.

“Good luck!” he yells behind him, as the car glides out onto the road. It’s low slung, not great for the slippery surface, but there are chains on the wheels already in preparation. Ilya’s miserable figure disappears into a small dot behind him as he drives further and further away, into freedom. The wind is icy cold but Hopper doesn’t care. The peninsula stretches out before him - the mountains, white and towering. The sky, a hazy shade of lilac. Wind buffers his shaven head.

And he laughs out loud.

The air tastes like freedom.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

** Thirteen Hours Later **

She’s clutching the sub-machine gun to her chest, her back pressed against the wall and her boots in Joe’s blood, her every nerve-ending on fire, when there’s a sound at the end of the hallway and she jerks up the gun. She doesn’t know how long she’s been here. The gunfire has long since gone silent. Maybe they’re all dead, she thinks, as her finger hovers over the trigger. Maybe they’re all-

“Joyce?”

She yelps and nearly drops the gun, her heartbeat stuttering. “Jesus _Christ_ ,” she says, trying to slow her breathing down. It’s Owens, looking tattered and grimy as he emerges from the shadowy end of the hallway. She probably looks the same, she realises.

“Thank god. You okay?” he asks, coming over to her and examining her with a professional eye. She nods, and he looks over at Joe’s dismembered body and winces. “Jesus.”

She stares at him. _We’re here to take it back with us_ , and _I’m nowhere near senior enough- but Owens likes me, so…_ “What the hell is wrong with you?” she manages. Her voice is thin from the aftershocks of the terror she still feels racing around her system but she forces the words out anyway. “We’re not here for Hopper, are we? And we’re not here to kill the demogorgon.”

“Joyce-”

“I can’t believe I fell for this,” she says, and for a moment it’s not Owens she’s looking at. _I’m sorry, babe, I’m so sorry. I love you, I’ll never do it again._ “After everything I really thought-”

“Yes, we had two objectives with this mission. _Two.”_ He looks at her urgently. “Jim is a part of that.”

She just shakes her head. She doesn’t know anymore. She doesn’t know.

“We can discuss this later, okay? We need to find the others, we don’t know when it’s going to come back-”

She looks at him, suddenly exhausted. She just wants to be home with her children. “It’s not going to come back,” she says quietly. She doesn’t know how she knows, but it’s a certain fact that has settled in her chest. It’s not going to come after her.

He looks at her strangely, but says nothing. She follows him down the hallway, casts another long look at Joe’s body before they turn the corner. _God._ They walk in silence, both of them with guns ready - but Joyce isn’t exactly proficient. Owens might be another story, who knows, but to her knowledge he’s a suit only. 

They don’t come across it, though. Wherever it’s gone, it’s not here. For now.

(She still can’t shake that _feeling_ \- the way it just turned and walked away from her- why would it do that? Why would it-)

“Don’t shoot!” 

There’s a man standing in the middle of the hallway, arms raised, wearing a tattered Soviet uniform. So there is someone still alive here after all. Owens raises his gun. “Are you armed?” he asks, voice brusque, the kindly uncle persona entirely fallen away.

The man frantically shakes his head. “No, no, I am not. I want to defect.”

They both stare at him. Joyce isn’t very familiar with military insignia but from what she can tell he isn’t exactly low-ranking. “Name?” Owens asks.

“Ilya. Please- I was in charge here.”

Ah, so all this is his fault. No wonder he wants to defect. This is Alexei all over again - and the thought comes with a rush of pain. Alexei and Hopper both dead in one night. Only Hopper’s not dead, is he? Is he?

“Come with us,” Owens is saying. And then they’re walking on and Owens has his gun trained on Ilya’s back and really? Seriously? They’re trapped in a labyrinth with what may as well be its minotaur and Owens is worried about a lone Soviet? 

“Jim Hopper,” she says breathlessly. Owens shoots her a look; she ignores him. “Was he here?”

Ilya arches an eyebrow. “The American? Yes. He was here.”

Her breath catches. “What- what happened to him, where is he-”

“He escaped. He took my car.” His voice is peevish; for a moment she has to restrain a laugh, because of course he would. That’s right out of the Jim Hopper playbook. And then she misses him, misses him with an ache that settles right on her chest. “He could be anywhere.”

“We can-”

Owens stops. Joyce stops too, sensing the sudden tension in his spine. He’s listening - and then she hears it. A low growling sound, distant through the wall. The demogorgon. It’s still here, then. Still prowling.

And beyond that: _“Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ-”_

Murray. 

On a burst of pure adrenaline she rounds the corner and takes in the scene: Murray crouched in the corner by a door that looks emphatically closed, clutching a gun as he takes in the demogorgon feasting on another fallen body, another all-but-teenaged soldier, and blocking his only exit. She sucks in a breath. But it’s loud, too loud, because the demogorgon’s bulbous head swings round to look at her. “Joyce,” Murray hisses. “ _Run.”_

But she doesn’t run.

Maybe she’s pushing her luck. Maybe it was pure fluke last time - but maybe it wasn’t. She stands there and looks at the demogorgon, and it looks back. Who was it that talked about staring long into an abyss? That’s what it feels like. It’s so terribly unhuman…

“Murray,” she whispers, not looking away from the monster’s sightless face. Her gun is forgotten. “Get up and walk slowly towards me.”

“What-”

She’s hinging everything on her gut right now. Everything hangs by a fine, thin thread, the one that’s linking her eyes to where the demogorgon’s should be. Luckily her intuition has never led her wrong. “Just do it.”

Slowly, achingly slowly, he uncurls himself and stands up. He takes one step, then two. He’s still a few yards away, still has to pass the demogorgon itself. It doesn’t seem to be conscious of him. Behind her she hears Owens hiss _“Joyce,”_ but she ignores him. 

“Murray, come on,” she says. Her jaw is taut. He takes another step - and now he’s parallel with the beast, so close he could probably reach out and touch it. She can hear her heartbeat pounding. He reaches up and wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead. So close, so, so close-

He’s past it. One step, then two, then three, and the monster is behind him. It shifts its weight, letting out a low growl, but doesn’t move. It almost looks… angry? Like it’s restrained, behind some invisible barrier, desperate to leap forward and tear them to shreds but somehow unable to. 

Murray grabs her arm as he reaches her. She lets him. “Alright, let’s go,” he says - and finally she tears her eyes away from the demogorgon. They make it around the corner.

And then all four of them start to run.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

     _Lately it seems that I've run out of dreams_  
_I know that I've been acting strange_  
_Now machines with no faces_  
_Are taking everyone's places_  
_It's no way to treat a human being_

Steve nods his head along to Eddie Money’s voice on the radio as he watches Nancy in line for the counter through the store windows, a distracted smile on her face. She looks so cute in that little blue dress. She looks at her watch and he sees her sigh, and then she looks out at him and gives him a little wave. He waves back and smiles to himself. He’s so lucky to have her.

The summer sky is clear and blue, and his car’s air con is working overtime to combat the muggy heat. With a sigh he turns it off and rolls the window down, letting a hand hang out. Across the street he sees Barb, Nancy’s friend, walking with her parents. She notices him and gives him a wave - he waves back. She’s alright, he thinks. Not really his type of person, but not bad. And she’s Nancy’s best friend in the whole world, so he can grin and bear it. For her.

His mind turns to tonight. He’s hosting a graduation party at his house for most of the graduating seniors and probably a good deal of the juniors too; he hopes they don’t make too much of a mess of the house. His dad is chill, but not that chill. Still, he supposes, he won’t have to worry about that for much longer. August he’s off to college, and even though that poses a whole new set of problems to do with his relationship with Nancy, he can’t wait. Somewhere new. Somewhere exciting. Somewhere that’s not here. 

“Hey,” Nancy says. He turns to see her ducking into the car, arms laden with bags. “I know you said to only get cups but I thought we needed plates, too, and napkins, and then there were some candles…”

“I’m sure it’s great,” he says, reaching over to turn the music down. She kisses him casually. “So that’s what took you so long?”

“Yeah,” she says. “That, and there was some sort of fuss with the clerk? I was talking to someone else in the line and they said that Mrs. Byers - you know Mrs. Byers? - she had some sort of breakdown, I don’t know, she was meant to be in today but they had to get someone to cover last-minute, so it’s super hectic.”

He gives a sympathetic hum. “Wasn’t it her son who went missing? In 1983?”

Nancy nods. Her eyes are big and sad. He remembers that whole incident well, remembers how weird and closed-off his dad had become. Later he’d come clean about it, saying _the year before you were born, Steve, Hawkins Lab tried to employ me. It fell through, but I’ve known there’s something off about that place for a while. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re involved in the boy’s disappearance._ And it was weird. Because they found the kid’s body and they held a funeral, right, but then he was found in the woods a week later. Like nothing ever happened.

It’s ancient history, though. Mrs. Byers got a reputation for crazy around town (or rather, solidified one), and her son back.

“I can’t imagine… God. It must have been awful. No wonder she’s having such a hard time.”

He frowns. It’s been a year and a half; he gets it was hard but surely-

“I mean, your youngest son goes missing and then right before you get him back your other son gets killed by a bear? I can’t imagine what that must feel like…” she says, and continues on with her sympathies, but Steve has stopped listening. _Your other son gets killed by a bear._

_Ah, the old cover story_ , he thinks, and then freezes. How does he know that? Whose cover story? _The lab,_ his mind handily supplies. “Jonathan,” he croaks.

Nancy gives him a strange look. “Yeah, that was his name. He was in my class, actually. I met him a few times, he was nice. Are you okay?”

His mouth’s gone dry. Jonathan. Jonathan’s dead? He can’t be dead, that isn’t… 

He remembers a time over the summer, right before the Byers moved, when the late summer air had a bitter, hazy quality to it and they were smoking weed in the junkyard, him and Nancy and Jonathan and Robin. They were all sitting on the dry, patchy grass, passing around the joint, and Jonathan was laughing at something Robin had said and so was Nancy, even though they don’t really like each other, and when they were quiet Steve said in a rush “I’m gonna miss you, Byers.” And Jonathan looked at him like he was speaking in German - but after a moment, he said quietly, even shyly, _“I’ll miss you too.”_

Only apparently none of that ever happened, because Jonathan Byers died in November 1983. 

And Nancy is looking at him with a sad, innocent smile, a smile that’s never seen the blue dark of the Upside Down, never seen the demogorgon with a face like a flower. The willowy girl in front of him lacks the iron of the girl who tore down Hawkins Lab brick by brick - and that’s not to say it isn’t in there, somewhere, but he can’t find it. It’s latent. Never provoked into action.

She’s not his Nancy.

And this isn’t his Hawkins. In his Hawkins, Barbara Holland died two years ago and Joyce Byers is the strongest woman he’s ever known; in his Hawkins his dad doesn’t let him throw parties and he doesn’t confess suspicions about the Lab over the dinner table because he _is_ the Lab.

For a moment-

Just a moment-

He wants this. He really wants this. He’s going to _college_ , he can’t forget that. His dad is actually proud of him - oh, and he’s not the archetype of every villain in every movie ever. He’s got Nancy back, Nancy as she was when they first started dating, all soft edges and floral smiles. There’s a lot here that he wants.

He can feel himself sinking into it. Nancy is asking “Are you okay?” and Steve is responding “Yeah, I’m good, let’s go,” and he’s driving off down the sunny not-Hawkins street and it’s almost out of his control, really, like he’s coasting down one of those lazy rivers in a waterpark, looking up at the hazy sky and losing any sense of time and place. 

This is nice, he allows. This could be nice.

( _Jonathan,_ a voice in his head whispers. And, _Robin. Dustin, Lucas, Max, Will, Mike, El-_ but the names don’t seem to have much meaning, not anymore. He knows a Mike, Nancy’s brother; he’s pretty sure he’s met some of the others at her house before- but the rest?)

He turns the music back up. “Do you think that Hargrove asshole’s gonna come?” Nancy asks, lip curled in disgust.

He shrugs, and gives her a smile. “I’m sure we’ll have a great time anyway.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

When Nancy opens her eyes, she’s in her room in Hawkins. The same pale walls, the same rose-colored curtains fluttering in the breeze. She doesn’t understand. Is this a dream? Why is she here?

The door opens-

And then she’s looking at herself. 

Her hair is long, longer than it is now, and she’s wearing a pale pink sweater. She barely recognises herself, even though she doesn’t look all that different. There’s just something- something _about_ her. The _other_ Nancy. 

And the next person into the room is Barb.

It’s like the floor drops out from beneath her feet. It’s _Barb_ , alive and breathing, smiling and laughing and older than she was before, with a different hairstyle and clothes Nancy’s never seen before. She’s grinning at not-Nancy. “...that’s totally unfair!” she’s saying, and not-Nancy is nodding vigorously. She sprawls on the bed, totally oblivious to Nancy’s presence. Neither of them can see her.

“I _know._ But I got a cute date with Steve out of it, _and_ I’m still looking at a 4.0.” 

“I can’t believe you’re getting a 4.0. Well, actually, I can.” Barb sits down on the bed too. “How many colleges offered you a scholarship again?”

“Shut up,” not-Nancy says, blushing. “You know I haven’t decided yet. Besides, there’s Steve to consider…”

“Steve, Steve, Steve. You’re going to college for yourself, not for Steve.”

“I know, but still…”

Nancy lets the conversation fade into the background. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t- what is this? Here she’s still with Steve; here _Barb is alive_ and they’re discussing their _college plans_ \- she has a 4.0 GPA- her GPA hasn’t been above a 3.8 since 1983-

She hears a noise in the hallway outside and soundlessly she slips out the door. The corridor is the same as always, the stairs are the same as always. But then she sees Mike. He looks just as she knows him, tall and gangly. He comes flying out of his room, followed closely by Lucas, who’s brandishing a thick book. They run down the stairs and she follows them. They dash through the kitchen, where her mom is whipping something up in her state-of-the-art Kenwood mixer. And then they’re heading down to the basement, and Nancy hesitates only slightly. It’s out-of-bounds for her, always has been ever since she refused to dress up for their campaign that first time and every time since until they stopped asking.

And then she follows them down to find the four boys sitting down to their game just like it’s 1983 again, only now they’re all slightly too big for the table. “...found it!” Lucas is crowing. “Will, you were right about that rule for Teleporting! It’s one to fifty, not one to forty-nine, for False Destination.” 

She steps closer. Will is conspicuously pale and thin, thinner than she remembers. His big eyes dart between the other boys and he looks happy, yes, but it’s shadowed by something. 

“So that means it’s a Mishap,” he says. 

“Goddamnit,” Dustin says, slapping the table. “How much damage are we taking?”

“A lot,” Mike says. “To each of you… and I have to roll to see where you wind up…”

Dustin lets out a stream of profanity and Lucas rolls his eyes, but Will just sits there quietly. There’s something off about him. Sure, he’s always quiet, but this is different. 

The door above them opens. “Michael!” their mom calls. “Mrs. Byers is here!”

Will’s face falls. After a cursory bit of argument Mike gives in, and Will troops up the stairs with him. Nancy decides to follow him, sure that the key to whatever this is lies in Will’s unhealthy pallor. As she’s leaving the basement she hears Lucas and Dustin’s hushed conversation behind her: 

_“Do you think that helped?”_

_“I don’t know, man, I mean, he got what he wanted, us playing DnD again, but he’s still so…”_

Upstairs Joyce is waiting in the kitchen, and Nancy has to stop and stare. She’s thin, really thin, smoking a cigarette with trembling yellowed fingers, with shadows carved like wounds on her face. Something’s happened, Nancy knows just from looking at her. Something terrible. 

“How’s Lonnie?” her mom asks. Nancy swings around to look at her, horrified.

Joyce seems vaguely startled that anyone is capable of perceiving her at all. (Nancy knows the feeling.) “He’s… okay. We’re okay.”

It’s so obviously a lie that Karen doesn’t call her on it. To do so would be cruel. “I know how hard it’s been for you,” she says, rounding the counter to place a hand on Joyce’s. Joyce flinches. “Losing Jonathan… I can’t imagine. But you can always talk to me.”

Losing Jonathan. _Losing Jonathan._ That’s why Will looks so gray and sad; that’s why Joyce is a trembling nervous wreck, why she’s clearly got back with Lonnie. Jonathan’s gone.

For a moment the world feels so goddamn empty. Nancy looks around the kitchen and it’s her kitchen, with her family in it, but they don’t feel real. Nothing feels real, and she feels like she’s standing on an island alone in a vast ocean, with no land in sight. Alone. On the brink of the abyss. _Losing Jonathan._

A world without Jonathan in it-

A Hawkins without Jonathan in it-

Her life without Jonathan in it-

She turns away, and then she’s facing darkness and that family- that kitchen- that world has disappeared. She feels a flood of relief so strong her knees feel weak. It wasn’t real. It was some- some hallucination- Jonathan isn’t gone, he’s here in Minnesota, he’s safe-

She looks around. She’s standing, still holding her gun in a hand that’s gone numb around it. She’s in a sort of dark hallway, ruined, with ivy creeping up cracks in the walls and are those charred marks on the bricks? She doesn’t recognise this at all. The thought plants a cold seed of fear in her gut. How did she get here? She remembers climbing the fence, remembers walking up through the woods…

And then nothing. And then _Barb._

(The thought that somehow- maybe- she exchanged Barb for Jonathan. That one had to die so the other could live. It sends a chill down her spine.)

Steve. Where is Steve? She looks around - she doesn’t see him. The air is thick and close, almost suffocating. She tightens her fingers around the grip of her gun and advances, dares to call out: “Steve?”

No response. She rounds the corner, heart in her throat-

And there he is. 

He’s just- standing there. Frozen. She runs to him, grabs his arm, but he doesn’t move. He’s silent, eyes closed straight ahead at nothing. “Steve,” she tries again, then louder. “Steve!” He doesn’t react. Like he’s in a trance. (She thinks of everything she just saw, having to _yank_ herself away from it all. Is this what she looked like too?)

“Steve-”

There’s a sound in the hallway up ahead. She tenses. _We’re not alone here._ Something else is here with them. She raises her gun and steps in front of Steve, silent and unmoving still. Nothing happens. Nothing happens for at least two minutes, long enough for her guard to begin to disintegrate, before-

Oh god oh no what the _fuck-_

Creeping out of the darkness, slick and black and oily, is a demodog. Just like the one El threw dead through the Byers’ front window; just like how Steve described it still living. It cocks its head at her and snarls, revealing row upon row of teeth inside its faceless head. She takes aim and fires before it can leap - it falls back, but just as quick there’s another one replacing it. She grabs Steve’s arm and drags him back with her. It’s like dragging a statue. And then the darkness begins to- begins to _crawl-_

_Oh god there’s so many of them-_

She shoots; she shoots again. Again and again, and she has to reload after this next one but they’re coming and if she turns her back on them and runs they’ll get them, she knows this, she _knows-_

The whole hallway is swarming with them. They’re not big but they’re strong, snapping at her like dogs baying for blood. They’re gonna get her- they’re gonna kill her, her and Steve, there’s too many of them- this is where they die-

She shoots her last bullet and desperately fumbles to reload, eyes on her fingers so she doesn’t have to see the one that kills her-

And then there’s a shot. 

She jerks up, startled, to find the nearest demodog cowering, bleeding black blood. The others snarl and converge but then there’s another explosive shot. They scatter. Another shot and then there’s a rough hand on her arm, dragging her back and Steve too and it takes her mind a second to process what’s happening but when it does she realises whose eyes she’s looking into.

_“Jonathan?”_

“What the hell’s wrong with Steve?” he shouts. She shakes her head - and then he slaps him.

Steve opens his eyes with a jolt and he looks confused, hazy, but there’s no time to stop because the demodogs are circling again and they have to _run-_ “Run,” she tells him. They run.

Hallway after hallway and they’re being chased, still, the demodogs snapping at their heels, rabid and _angry_ , and then there’s a faint light at the end of the corridor and they’ve nearly made it-

But then there’s a black shape standing in their way, its face opening up like the petals of a deadly flower. The three of them skid to a halt. Nancy’s still holding both boys’ hands, and their palms are clammy. So are hers. The horde is coming up behind them and she’s out of bullets- Jonathan is raising what she now sees is a shotgun but it’s long and ungainly- the demodogs are nearly on them-

Steve leaps forward and swings the bat. The bat. That gorgeous nail bat, she’d forgotten about it- 

It collides with the demodog’s sinuous body with a crunch. The dog goes flying, hits the wall. Leaves the path to the exit clear. 

She doesn’t need telling twice. She _runs_ , and drags the two of them with her. They burst free of the creaking doors and then into the woods. They can’t stop yet, the things are probably still right behind them-

Her foot catches on a root and she topples to the ground with a cry, her hand ripped from Jonathan’s. Steve falls with her. Out of habit, learned, terrified habit, she looks over her shoulder at their pursuers-

There’s nothing there. 

The woods are empty. The building is shrouded in shadow and early morning mist and there’s no black shapes swarming out of it, nothing coming after them. Nothing there. “What the…” Jonathan mutters. She notices that his hands as he holds the shotgun are faintly trembling. ( _I guess he thought it would make me into more of a man or something-_ )

Steve is wide-eyed, shell-shocked, on the ground beside her. She looks around the empty, echoing woods, and then up at the sky. It’s warm gray, shot with streaks of violent red. Dawn. 

“Hey, man,” Steve says, his voice exhausted, like he’s only just noticed Jonathan’s here.

“Hey, Steve,” Jonathan says, in a matching tone.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“It sucks that you can’t come with us.”

Dustin looks at Max, who’s eyeing him with a sympathetic smile, and nods. “Yeah, tell me about it. You guys better tell me _everything_ that happens. No skimping on the details like you did over the summer. You know I had to get _Nancy_ to tell me everything that happened? Nancy. You guys couldn’t even update me-”

“Whoa, okay, fine. We’ll update you.” 

“C’mon, we need to go,” Mike says, brushing past them with a look. They’re stood in the Wheelers’ front yard. Everything is gray and overcast; the sun only rose an hour ago. Robin and Kali are leaning against Mrs. Wheeler’s car, talking inaudibly. Leaving for Minnesota, and Dustin can’t come.

He digs his hands in his pockets and scuffs his foot in the grass. He understands why he has to stay, he thinks. If nothing else, his mom would freak out if he just upped and left for Minnesota without any warning in the middle of the semester. And someone has to stay here in Hawkins to… keep an eye. Make sure there’s no more evil Russians creeping in and opening gates right under their noses. (Because it seems like Lucas has forgotten about it all.)

Mrs. Wheeler emerges from the house, wearing a stylish winter coat with big shoulders and carrying an overnight bag. The fact that she _knows_ now- it’s weird. It’s really weird. Mrs. Byers is one thing, she’s been in this mess from the beginning, but Mike’s mom…

It’s weird.

She visibly takes a deep breath and comes over to them. “Okay, we should get going.” She looks at Max. “Maxine, I’m still not sure it’s a good idea for you to-”

“It’s fine,” Max says, tightly. There’s something desperate in her eyes, like she _needs_ to go to Minnesota. Or maybe she needs to get out of Hawkins. With a pang he realises he barely knows what’s going on in her life; they haven’t talked in ages. “They’ll be glad to see the back of me for a few days.”

Mrs. Wheeler looks like she wants to press the issue, but she closes her mouth. Her parental authority - the same authority that would scold him for cursing or upsetting Holly - is distant and unsure. She’s at sea in this, he realises. Just because she’s an adult doesn’t mean she has all the answers. 

“Let’s _go_ ,” Mike shouts. He looks aggravated and desperate. El’s in danger - of course he’s desperate. Dustin feels a great wave of anxiety wash over him and once again he wishes he was going with them. He’s the smartest of the party, he _knows_ this, he’s not just being arrogant. They could use him. They need him.

But he has to stay here.

“Try and fix Cerebro, okay? Then we can talk to you.” Max hugs him, tight. There’s a thick knot of fear in his throat - what if they don’t come back? What if the last time he ever sees them?

He hugs Mike and Robin too, and then they all get in the car. All of them leaving, except him. Facing the unknown while he’s stuck in Hawkins. The small town where both very little and far too much happens. 

He waves them off, and watches the road long after they’ve disappeared.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

“Did you hear, they found old Mr. Reed?” 

“No, really? Where? Is he alright?” There’s a concerned look on his mom’s face; Lucas is barely listening as he shovels bacon into his mouth.

His dad nods. “Physically, he’s fine. They found him out between Cornwallis and Kerley.” Slowly, Lucas looks up from his plate and listens harder. “Mentally, it sounds like a different story. Chief Randall took one look at him and sent him off to Pennhurst.”

His mom scoffs. “I hardly think Chief Randall is the best judge of anything.”

“Wait, who’s Mr. Reed?” Lucas interrupts. 

“A hunter. He’s been living in this town for as long as anyone can remember - he’s practically a fixture.”

“He went missing a couple days ago,” his dad explains, over his coffee mug. “Randall launched an investigation but they only found him last night.”

Cornwallis and Kerley. The route Will used to take home; Mirkwood. Between the Byers’ old house and Steve’s. He thinks about what Mike said the other day, about the alarm in his voice as he talked about a cave that _felt like it was looking at me._ Maybe there is something in it after all. And this is how it starts, each time. Little things going wrong.

“...not surprising. You know, I’m considering writing to the governor about Randall’s attitude. He’s appalling for this town.”

His dad sighs. “You’re right, but I don’t think you’re gonna get anywhere. He’s the hardliner they brought in after the mess with Mayor Kline and the mall. This town has gone right back to the dark ages, especially with that woman Pat Pulling on the TV every other night.”

His mom pulls a face; so does Lucas. But he’s not really listening anymore. And on cue, Erica emerges in the doorway.

“A call for you, Mr. Sinclair,” she says, with a smirk. She’s brandishing his supercomm - has she been in his room again? He scowls, but he gets up and goes to her. 

“Thank you, Erica,” he says, voice sarcastically polite. He takes the radio from her as she continues to smirk in return, and pushes past her to go upstairs. 

“Lucas! Remember we’re going to be out all day for that house viewing in Fort Wayne!” his mom calls after him. His stomach sinks, but he manages to yell back, “Fine!” His parents going to look at a house a hundred miles away doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself. Just like it didn’t mean anything when they were just talking about it. Now they’re doing it.

It’s only when he’s reached his room and closed the door that he holds down the button of his supercomm and prays it’s not a code red. “This is Lucas, over.”

“It’s Max. Over.”

He frowns, and tries to ignore the way his heartbeat speeds up in his chest. “What is it?”

“We’re leaving town.”

He sits up. “What? Who’s ‘we’?” If she says Mike again he swears to god-

She doesn’t answer. “We’re going to Minnesota to talk to El. Mrs. Wheeler is driving us, she thinks she knows where they went.”

His first emotion is betrayal; his second is shame. Why didn’t they tell him? Why are they going without him? But of course, he made it very obvious that he didn’t want them to tell him. He didn’t want to know. He was focused on partying, on his newfound popularity, on basketball. (And look where that got him, he thinks. Humiliating himself and losing them the game. When he thinks about the school day ahead, his stomach churns with nerves, because no doubt everyone will have something to say about it.)

Max is speaking again. “Listen, Lucas, be safe? I don’t-” She breaks off. There’s something weird in her voice. (He _misses_ her-) “I know you don’t want to face this. I know. And I get it. But I need you to be on the lookout. It’s just you and Dustin and I guess Erica left who know about everything, and if something happens…”

“I got it,” he says. “Say hi to El and Will for me?”

“I will.” Why does this feel so final? Why does it feel like her tinny voice crackling over the radio waves is the last he’ll ever hear of her? “Dustin’s gonna fix Cerebro, so we can talk to you guys from Minnesota. Talk to him, maybe? I don’t-” Her voice is small. “I’m worried.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Hey, it’s Hawkins. What’s the worst that could happen?” That earns him a laugh. “You be safe too, okay? I’ll hold the fort.”

“Okay.” There’s a long silence, and then… “Over and out.”

It cuts out and then he stares at the wall, a flurry of emotions swirling around inside him. They’re leaving. They’re _leaving Hawkins_ and what if they don’t ever come back? What if-

_I know you don’t want to face this._ She’s right, he doesn’t. But equally he’s been blind, blind and stupid. He can shove it down all he wants but still it will come out, it will show in horrible ways like what happened at the game - whether it’s over or not, he can’t pretend it never happened. He can’t. 

He can’t.

_I just- I found something weird, alright? I found something weird in the woods-_

Maybe there is something he can do while the rest of them are gone. Maybe he can make up for how inactive he’s been, how passive. How stupid.

He goes downstairs and into his dad’s study, grabbing his mapbooks of Hawkins and, after a moment of hesitation, a fat tome on geology that he’s pretty sure has never been touched. Then he heads back upstairs and looks through them desperately, looks through them until he’s sure that whatever Mike saw, it’s not on the map; and from his brief, confused scan of the pages on speleology, which is apparently the study of caves, it can’t be a cave either, because caves don’t just rise up out of the ground from nothing. Not without an earthquake or a sinkhole at the very least, and Lucas is pretty sure he would’ve noticed that. So-

He grabs his bandana and his slingshot, sliding them into his backpack before emptying it of books. He doesn’t need them - school can wait. Then he hurries downstairs without a backwards glance, half-afraid they’re going to stop him-

“Lucas!”

He stops as his mom comes to meet him by the door, tensing. There’s no way she can tell he’s not going to school, is there? It’s not like he looks any different. He’s carrying his bag. But his mom has ridiculously good intuition, so he waits with his heart in his throat.

But she just smiles at him and zips up his coat for him. “Have a good day at school!”

In the background he sees Erica wrinkling her nose. Briefly, he considers telling her. Bringing her with him. She knows, after all - she was there last summer. She met the _Russians._ But she’s still young, really young, and if she gets hurt his mom will probably slaughter him with a meat cleaver. 

So he just scowls at her and leaves.

The Byers’ old house and Steve’s house are the opposite end of town to him; cycling there takes at least twenty minutes. He thinks about that night in 1983, Will biking off into the unknown on his own for at least ten of those twenty minutes. The way that those ten minutes were enough for everything to go wrong. He shivers and cycles a little faster.

And then he’s cycling down Mirkwood, and he slows to a stop and walks his bike through the trees. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, not really. Half of him thinks Mike made the whole thing up. It’s absurd, really - not scary, just absurd. A cave appearing out of nowhere in the woods. He meant it when he said it’s not exactly the gates of hell, because the Upside Down tends to be a lot more dramatic.

When he finds it, though, his objections dissolve in his head. He rounds a thicket of brambles and then suddenly there it is, staring at him. A hole as black as a void, under an outcropping of rock that apparently came from nowhere.

It’s just a cave. 

But he’s gone tense. He thinks about Mr. Reed, about _mentally, it sounds like a different story,_ feeling a chill creeping up his spine. Pointedly, he refuses to listen to it. He’s doing this. He’s gonna find out what this is, and then maybe he can help El from here. He refuses to be useless to the party. 

He props his bike against the nearest tree, takes his flashlight out of his bag, and takes a deep breath. _I know you don’t want to face this._

Determined to prove her wrong, he steps forward.

The black of the cave swallows him up.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅ 

The light of the morning is warm and soft. She knows it’s golden without even opening her eyes. She’s comfortable, well-rested to her very bones. She wants to stay here forever.

“Joyce.” 

His voice rumbles deep above her and she feels a large, gentle hand trace through her hair. Slowly she blinks her eyes open and smiles sleepily up at him. “Hop. What time is it?”

“Time to get up, that’s what time it is. You’re as bad as Jonathan, I swear.”

She snorts despite herself and lazily brings herself to sit up. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, already dressed in jeans and the light flannel she’d stolen from him to wear the day before. Smiling face clean shaven. His hand comes up to her neck and tugs her in for a kiss, which she pouts into despite how soft it is. “Morning breath!” she protests against his lips and he grins, eyes still closed.

“Don’t care,” he says, and leans in to kiss her again. She swats him away and slides her legs out of bed, sweeping her long hair away from her neck to fall down one shoulder. “What time are they coming again?”

She frowns, mind still caught up in the bliss of the morning. “Who?”

“Your family. Please tell me you hadn’t forgotten.”

She looks over at him with a guilty expression. “Maybe?” He raises an eyebrow as she goes over to the wardrobe and considers her options. Her mom will expect her to wear a dress, she knows this. She also knows it’s the middle of winter and she doesn’t own any that are warmer than a sundress. “D’you think I can get away with jeans and a turtleneck? My mom’s so old fashioned but it’s so cold out…”

“You could get away with anything,” he says, and suddenly he’s behind her, winding his arms around her middle and resting his chin in the crook of her neck. “Just wear what you want. She won’t mind.”

Joyce scoffs. “Wanna bet?” she says, but it’s not bitter. Her mom won’t mind, not really, not beyond some mild comment that it would be stupid to dwell on, since the day’s so sunny. So nice.

He leaves her to get dressed, promising breakfast that she knows he won’t be cooking, and she applies mascara and lipstick in front of the field of photos on her dressing table. Her family, all mapped out. School photos, holiday polaroids. She smiles to herself as she smoothes moisturiser into her hands and then slides her wedding ring on, admiring the way the simple gold sparkles in the trickling sun. 

In the kitchen Hopper’s humming along to the music straining distantly from another room as he stirs a pan of eggs - and wow, he’s actually cooking for a change. She smiles at him and goes to the cupboard, fetches out four plates and four sets of knives and forks. “Kids, breakfast!” she calls. 

Jonathan emerges first, blond hair a nest on his head. He takes a plate and sits down at the table without a word, squinting blue eyes in the sun. 

“Hey, how about taking plates for everyone else, huh?”

“Sorry, Mom.” He ducks his head and runs a hand through his hair, tangling it even further. “Have you seen my comb? I swear-”

“Mom!” 

She turns, feels herself frown for no reason as Charlotte comes in. Her dark hair, too, is a mess, and there’s a smear of mud on her cheek. “What have you been doing?” Joyce tuts, moving forward to smudge the dirt away with her thumb.

“I was digging out the driveway. Because of the snow? Which is something that _Jonathan_ should have done, but for some reason he left it to me-”

Is it her, or is the music getting louder?

     _You kick them when they fall down_  
_Kick them when they fall down_  
_It was dark as I drove the point home…_

“I left it because it was way too early, it only got light like an hour ago! We’ve got ages until we need to go out-”

“No, actually, we don’t. Your grandma might need a lift to get here because of the snow.” Hop’s voice is stern. 

There’s a guilty silence-

     _Well, it suddenly struck me_  
_I might just die with a smile on my face_  
_after all..._

“Jonathan, can you turn your music down? I can barely hear myself think,” Joyce says, voice cutting through the quiet.

Charlotte is staring at her. “Mom, that’s my music. Jonathan hates _The Smiths._ ”

Everything inside her drops. It throws her off. Why does it throw her off? Why does it make it feel like the sun’s gone in? Like someone’s pouring ice cold water down her spine, like something’s gone horribly, horribly wrong here and she doesn’t know how to fix it?

Like climbing the stairs in the dark and knowing _for sure_ that there’s one more step, the thirteenth step right at the top, only there’s only twelve and there’s that awful moment of sickening dread as you realise you were wrong all along and your foot’s about to land on empty air and the damage to your balance might send you tumbling all the way back down, glass of water flying through the air and splattering like blood on the wall and shattering with a crash inhumanly loud in the nighttime silence.

Charlotte. How does she know the girl’s name is Charlotte? She sees dark hair and chaotic expression and she thinks _mine_ , but why? 

And Jonathan. The name, sure, the name is comfortable enough, but he’s all wrong. Features too blunt, too blond, too blue. He’s slouching at her table shirking his chores and not singing along to _The Smiths_ and for some reason that makes her chest tighten.

The cast of the sun, even. It’s so bright, too bright. She doesn’t know what other world she comes from but she knows for sure the sun’s never been this bright there. Knows for sure the eggs on her plate will make her stomach turn.

The phone rings. 

The phone rings and she must jump a foot in the air because they’re all looking at her with surprise, concern, alarm. The panic in her chest isn’t the mere memory she managed to banish way back in high school but something learned, familiar. Muscle memory, reacting to the sound of the phone.

“You gonna answer that?” Hop says, not unkindly. “It’s probably your mom.”

She nods on autopilot and steps over to it. She lets her fingers hover over the receiver a little longer than necessary, like she’s afraid it might burn her. She doesn’t know, maybe it will. “Hello?”

“Joyce, hey,” he says, and her stomach sinks so fast she thinks she’s going to throw up. 

When she was nineteen, her brother killed himself. She’d been at college at the time, studying something she barely remembers what. She’d got the call from her then-ailing father when she was in class, in fact. A secretary from the dean’s office had called her out and said _You’d better come right away, it’s your brother._ She’d known, immediately she’d known. She’d known without having to hear about the still-smoking, still-scalding hot barrel of the gun, about the blood splattered over the ceiling and the walls and the dull formica countertop. 

(She heard about it anyway, of course. Her father hadn’t been able to keep it to himself. Had let the words spill out of him until there were none left for the ensuing five months before he died, ensuring he and Joyce - now home from college forever, since there was no one else to look after him - lived them out in silence.)

There was no mom. No sundresses, no family lunches. She was long gone by then. She died in Joyce’s fifth grade, left her motherless, anxious, and alone. Left her with her father and her brother and some kind of crippling complex that meant she couldn’t have all this. Couldn’t have her high school sweetheart be Hopper, actually sweet of heart, who’d happily marry her without first knocking her up. Couldn’t have sandy-haired Jonathan or fiery, girlish Charlotte. Couldn’t have her brother calling her up to invite himself for Sunday lunch.

“Joyce?”

He’s still there.

For a moment she hesitates. She could have this, she realises. This is what’s being offered. A life that never went wrong. 

All she has to do - and she can feel the words, nudging from the back of her mind to the tip of her tongue - is say his name. Say his name, and ask him how he is, and if he’d like to come to lunch today. _Mom’s coming, did she tell you? Oh, you don’t have to bring anything, we’ve got plenty of food. Charlotte’s making dessert. Yeah, I know. Growing up fast. Well, we’ll see you in a-_

“No. No, I’m not doing this.” She has to tear herself out of the vision her mind’s led her into. It’s so nice, so comforting, like the embrace of the blanket that smells like Hopper that’s lying on the bed she left this morning. “None of this is real.”

“Mom?” Charlotte ventures, looking up at her with eyes that are suddenly huge, green-brown, eyes that don’t belong in her face. Will’s eyes, and Will doesn’t exist here. Joyce clenches her fist and shakes her head.

“Mom?” That’s Jonathan, but it’s not her Jonathan. It’s another Joyce’s Jonathan, because this Joyce- she doesn’t belong in this world. 

“Joyce?” And that’s the most painful goodbye of all. Hopper, her Hopper, the same only with a few less lines, a few less crippling ounces of stress loaded on his shoulders that he carries like Atlas. He’s so close to hers that for a moment she considers sinking into him, telling him all about this horrible dream she had where she married Lonnie Byers and had a son who was stolen by monsters and where Hopper may well be dead.

But he might not be, and if he’s not she can’t stay here. Here, where the real-not-real version of him looks at her with soft eyes in a soft face, which she might have prayed for once but she’s not soft either, not anymore.

“I’m not staying here,” she says, and something in the air snaps.

Her not-family’s faces change, morph, mutate from the uncanny to the downright horrific. _The Smiths_ have disappeared and in their place is a hideous whine just within the frequency she can hear. It bores into her skull as the fake golden kitchen boils and melts around her, as not-Hopper’s lips move with words and a voice that aren’t his.

    you’ll regret that, girlyou want to see what **reality** lookslike? 

It says, as his face twists into an expression of acceptance, forgiveness, release, like it did right before she turned the keys and surrendered him to an oblivion which was more than happy to accept him. Maybe he’s in there somewhere, she thinks with a jolt of horror - but it’s an expression that says she did the right thing so maybe it doesn’t matter if he is, even if she does live to regret it.

-Then she, too, is thrust into oblivion. Reality, the thing wearing Hopper’s face claimed. How bad can reality be?

↥↭↭↬

There are only so many universes the human mind can handle.

In one, she watches her surviving son beat her ex-ex-husband to death. In another she watches the clock wind down to cessation as he never comes home. There’s a reality where her son dies, a reality where he’s a scared little cancer patient with _012_ etched into his skin. One where it’s Hopper who dies on the floor of the lobby, Bob safe and sound and tucked away in his bed, only not for long because without Hopper El doesn’t make it into the Lab and without El there’s no hope for any of them, not even Bob. There’s one where Hopper dies choking on his own vomit on his shitty trailer sofa and she spends the rest of her life wondering why. 

(There’s one where she dies that way too. She watches her surviving son throw a rose on her coffin and screams silently, because now no one knows the truth.)

She’s subject to a reality in which she miscarries in the first trimester. The second. The third. There are realities in which she never marries Lonnie because she doesn’t have to. She goes back to college and Hawkins is a memory - or she goes back to college and runs out of money, and slips needles into her veins in exchange for cheques signed by a man with already-white hair.

There’s a world in which Will is born surrounded by men with guns and he never grows up Will at all. A world where Hopper picks up a scared kid in a hospital gown and it makes her heart fall right out of her ribcage. A world in which she calls her daughter Eleanor, though she doesn’t know why.

There’s a world where Lonnie crows beside her as man walks on the moon, and a world in which he sinks down in shock as the astronauts burn. There are realities that have nothing to do with them, realities where it’s for different people that everything goes wrong, but sometimes those people are important and what happens is bad. In one 1962 the USSR fires and DC, New York, Chicago go up in smoke. Hawkins too. In another the troops invade Cuba and the Cold War isn’t so cold anymore. In several ‘62s the crisis passes, resolved, or it never even happens at all, and a year later they don’t watch replays of JFK getting shot in the head on the evening news for weeks and weeks after. 

There’s a reality where the swastika flies over the White House and Joyce lives a secret sort of life with a man who doesn’t know who her mother was, and hopefully never will. She sells cigarettes to Nazis at her day job and makes munitions to kill them at night and her sons don’t protest, only look at her nervously when she comes home with bruises and gun residue on her hands.

And there are hundreds and thousands and millions of these universes. She sees every iteration of her children that there is, every iteration of her marriage, of her life. She sees themes and patterns and things that don’t make sense and it should have been one of the kids, she thinks, because her life is half over and you need a lifetime to even begin to unravel the threads of everything she’s seen. But she wouldn’t wish this on them, on anyone. She is Kassandra, mad with truth. The unlucky prophet of something enormous and awful.

     do you see? it says to her. do you **see**?

She shudders as she faces it, the towering monstrosity with an eye that bleeds through worlds. “Yes,” she says, hatefully. “I see.”

It releases her. Sends her tumbling back to her body where the chaos around her is nothing, _nothing_ compared to what she’s just seen. Sends her back with knowledge that doesn’t fit here, doesn’t fit anywhere, will break any boundary in order to expand. Someone is yelling and there’s a wailing siren but she doesn’t open her eyes. So she sees the abomination’s joy. 

If it were able to smile, she thinks, if it didn’t have dripping sloughs of leather dark as ink with a gash for its thousandfold razor teeth instead of lips, it would be grinning.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits: [in dreams by roy orbison](https://open.spotify.com/track/5YsyqcewwE0c1ukzHVciS3?si=B1GZEiyBRYqQnUhJcXmVjA)
> 
> let me know what you think <3


	5. Folie À Deux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonathan visits Joyce in hospital. Alone in Hawkins, Lucas and Dustin have to accept that the dangers are still out there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for dubious medical practice, mental hospitals and pejorative language to do with mental health, blood, and violence.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."  
– H.P. Lovecraft, _The Call of Cthulhu_ (1926)

“When you start a new life the past comes with you because there is nowhere else for it to go. One day they’ll rent an island where you can send your past so that it doesn’t have to live with you. But until then…”  
– Jeanette Winterson, _The Agony of Intimacy_ (2010)

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Monday, January 20th, 1986**  
Somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota

Before they return to Jonathan’s house, they stop off at Mickey’s Diner for breakfast. The three of them, exhausted and grimy, sit down at a booth and the first thing that happens is the manager comes over to them and asks Jonathan where his mom is.

He shrugs. Ordinarily the question would set panic ablaze in his chest but he’s exhausted and numb; the day has taken on a strange, surreal quality. _Here we go again,_ he’s thinking. It doesn’t even surprise him anymore.

“Well, tell her she can forget about her job. I gave her two days off, not three. Do you know how hard it is to get cover when someone just… doesn’t turn up?”

Jonathan just looks at him. He throws his hands up in the air and walks off, and Jonathan traces a scratch in the formica idly. A few hours ago his mom losing her job would have been the end of the world; now they might be facing the real end of the world.

“Shit, man,” Steve says. “That’s rough. Where is she?”

He bites his lip. “I don’t know. She said she was going to Minneapolis but she was lying, and she met up with Owens and Murray the other day-”

“Murray?” Nancy’s eyes sharpen, and she leans closer. There’s a nasty bruise on her temple, he sees, and streaks of dirt on her face. “What did they want?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything, I just-”

The waitress, clearly brought in to cover, arrives and takes their orders with unpracticed clumsiness. A burger for Steve, an omelette for Jonathan, blueberry pancakes for Nancy. Coffees all around, since apparently they’ve been up all night. (How the hell is it _morning-_ ) Finally, they’re left alone. Nancy has laid her hand on the table. Cautiously, Jonathan reaches across and takes it - her skin is soft and warm. 

Steve coughs and says, “So how did you know we were there?”

He nearly laughs. It sounds ridiculous, when he says it out loud. “I had a feeling.”

Neither of them laugh, though. He guesses _feelings_ are what keep them all alive. “I still can’t- what I _saw-”_ Nancy shakes her head. “It was like… a different world. Where Barb didn’t die.”

“She was alive in mine as well.” Steve says quietly. Jonathan looks at him with wide eyes. “And you were-”

The two of them share a loaded glance and Jonathan shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He feels more than a little like someone’s just walked over his grave. “What does it _mean?”_ Nancy asks, as ever searching for a solution. “I don’t remember walking in there. I remember arriving, going over the fence, it was nearly dark-”

“And then we came out, and it was dawn,” Jonathan finishes for her. He remembers walking in there, unlike them. He remembers a- a _shudder_ of the darkness around him as he entered the building, something that made him turn his head furiously like the shadows were moving, like they were _alive_ , but he found nothing. And then he turned the corner and there they were, Nancy and Steve, Steve catatonic as Nancy battled a hundred demodogs all on her own. 

Steve excuses himself to go to the bathroom and then Jonathan’s facing Nancy across the table, alone with her for the first time in months. She smiles at him a little shyly, but that steely look hasn’t left her eyes. “How have you been?” she asks.

He blinks at her, and strokes his thumb over her knuckles absently. What a question. God, what a fucking question. “Okay,” he comes up with, finally. It doesn’t cover it, not at all. But how does he explain? Not even the recent stuff, his mom’s lies and the way there’s something weird about this town - but everything. The way he has to work so hard that he’s usually asleep by nine, if he doesn’t have a late Saturday shift. The way in those first few months here, when the forest was a field of burning orange slowly decaying into brown, his mom would have a panic attack every time the phone rang and El wouldn’t speak for weeks on end. The smell of smoke and citronella to ward off the last of the summer mosquitoes. The way he’d have to get up early to cook a breakfast that no one would eat.

Nancy wants to know, he sees it in her eyes, but he doesn’t know how to tell her. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. 

“It’s nice to see you,” she says, and she means it. He can tell. “Even if it takes… well, the world ending again for it to happen.”

He smiles a little, wryly. A nice little joke they have - only it’s not nice, not at all. _The world ending again._ Fucking _great_. “I think there’s something wrong with this town,” he says. “There’s something weird about it. I don’t- I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

“You know, I couldn’t remember the name of it.” Her voice is low. “And the map, it- changed. It _changed._ ”

He stares at her. So he was right. “You know-” This is crazy. This is a crazy idea, no way. But- “They don’t have any new movies here. They’re still showing _The_ _Breakfast Club._ The same with music.” Now that he’s talking, he can’t seem to stop. There are so many weird things, inconsistencies, that he could dismiss in the moment but seem unignorable now. Steve has returned, sliding into the booth carelessly, but he continues anyway. “And the people are weird too. There was this woman, the other day, she- she was staring at El. She said- she said to her, _It wants you. It’s coming back for you. It’s waiting_.” He looks at the pair of them, stricken. “What does that _mean?”_

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. But I think- I think it all has to do with that government building. I think- something _showed_ us those things, so that we wouldn’t get any closer.”

“Whoa, whoa, _what?”_ Steve’s eyes are wide with alarm. His voice drops to a whisper. “You think it was- you think it was something like the _Mind Flayer_? Maybe it was just like a- a chemical leak, or something, and we were hallucinating.”

“After everything, you really think the Upside Down is less likely than a chemical leak?” Nancy hisses. Jonathan is surprised at the vehemence in her voice. Then their food arrives, and they sit in awkward silence as the waitress sets it down. She leaves, and they eat without looking at each other. Jonathan’s coffee is gritty and bitter. 

Finally Steve says coldly, “You know, it’d be nice if you could stop assuming the worst about me. I’m just trying to be rational, here. We gotta explore all the options.”

“There’s exploring the options and then there’s being in denial about them, Steve.”

Jonathan looks between them, mystified and more than a little exhausted. Steve has opened his mouth to respond but Jonathan shakes his head and signals to the waitress for the bill. He takes out his wallet - but before he can even attempt to pay, Steve is handing over a slim wad of cash. 

“I can-”

“I got it,” he says, with a meaningful look. Jonathan bites his lip so hard it stings, but he slides his wallet back into his pocket. And then they get up and go out into the frosty air, and Nancy sticks close by his side, winding her fingers around his. He can’t tell whether it’s for him or to annoy Steve, not really. Probably some element of both. “It’s less than ten minutes’ drive to my house, so just follow me,” he says to Steve, who’s lighting a cigarette with twitchy fingers. His hair is dirty and suspiciously flat.

He nods, and then Jonathan drives off with Nancy in shotgun and Steve following close behind. “What was that about?” he asks, when they’re on their way. 

Nancy shoots him a look and sighs. “We’re here because of Steve’s dad, because we found out he’s working with the Department of Energy.” Holy shit. “And he put Steve’s name on the deeds for that place.” Holy _shit._ “I just- I feel like he’s minimising the problem. This is exactly like when we were dating, and he just wanted to be stupid teenagers-”

“Is it?”

She frowns and looks at him sideways. “What?”

He shrugs. “I’m just asking, is it like that? He came all the way up here with you, Nance. Just like I would’ve done.”

She’s staring at him. “That’s not- you’re not-”

It feels weird to him too. Relating himself to Steve. They couldn’t be more different, he’s always thought, even now that they’re not enemies so much as reluctant friends. But they’re the same in this aspect, at least. Getting dragged along to places they might not wanna go by the girl they’d do anything for.

She’s silent for the rest of the short ride, and soon enough they’re pulling into his driveway. They get out, Steve close behind, and Jonathan’s the first one to the door. It’s unlocked, which makes his heart sink. If nothing else that means Will and El didn’t lock the door when they went to bed - hell, did they even eat dinner? Or have they been up all night?

He rushes in, desperately worried, to find-

Will and El sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV displaying crackling static, hands linked, blindfolds over both their eyes. When he moves closer, Jonathan sees that they both have nosebleeds.

What the _fuck-_

“Whoa,” Nancy says behind him, as the two of them look up at the sound and remove their blindfolds. They both look relieved to see them, and not all that surprised. 

“Jonathan,” El says, standing up and wiping the blood from her lip.

He stares at them, at the TV crackling quietly behind them, at the blindfolds discarded on the floor. He doesn’t like the look of this, not at all. “What’s going on?” he asks, barely a whisper.

Will opens his mouth but it’s El who responds. She’s got that intense look in her eyes that she hasn’t had since July. “Dad’s alive. Mom’s in Russia.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

_Dad’s alive. Mom’s in Russia._

After a little bit of explaining it becomes clear that ‘Dad’ is Hopper and that ‘Mom’ is Joyce; at this revelation Steve could _swear_ he sees Jonathan shed a few happy tears, looking at El like she’s his sister - which, Steve guesses, she is. And then comes the question of _how do you know_ , and there’s a lot of rapid, excited talk about something called the Inbetween? And dreams? And catalysts? Steve doesn’t really understand it, neither does Nancy by the glance they share, but Jonathan nods along like he does, or is at least indulging them.

The upshot of it all is: Joyce is in Soviet Russia with Murray and Owens, looking for the Chief, and Will has new powers that include helping El find people. 

“Wait, ‘include’?” Steve asks, stepping forward. Everyone looks at him in surprise, as if they’d forgotten he was here. “What else can you do?”

Will shifts awkwardly, looking at the floor. El answers for him: “He can cast Teleport.”

Steve blinks, and looks at Jonathan and Nancy. They look equally confused, wary. It can’t be what it sounds like. The rest of it he can just about accept, but this isn’t a comic book. This is _crazy._ “What does that mean?” Jonathan asks.

“It means I can go from here to Hawkins in about a second,” Will says finally, looking up. “Maybe further, I don’t know.”

“Holy shit,” Nancy says, as Steve lets out a low whistle. 

“Did they find Hopper?” Jonathan asks quietly. El’s face crumples; she shakes her head. He reaches for her and she comes to him readily for a hug. Steve blinks, and then wonders why he’s at all surprised. Jonathan has always been a great brother. 

“Is that what you were doing?” Nancy asks. “Looking for Hopper?”

Will nods. “We were so close- he keeps slipping away.”

Her face is furrowed, concentrating. She has that look where she’s got an idea, one that she’s gonna follow to the end and not let go. It’s a look that scares him more than it thrills him - though there’s an element of both. “In 1983- El found you and Barb in the Upside Down.” Her voice trembles only slightly on _Barb._

El emerges from Jonathan’s arms and nods tearily. “In the bath.”

“The bath?” Steve asks. He vaguely recalls being told about something to do with a kiddie pool, but…

“A sensory deprivation tank,” Will says, lighting up. “Of course.”

“Do you know how to build one?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, I wrote it down, just in case.” Of course she did. She digs her notebook out of her bag and flips to one of the earlier pages. “We need-”

“Hold on, hold on.” Jonathan looks pale and tense. “Is this a good idea? Is it safe?”

“It’s fine,” Will says, as El says “Yes.” 

“You know Mom would freak if-”

“This is for her,” El argues. “For Mom and for Dad.”

The titles she gives them seem to melt him. Steve can understand his worry - hell, he’s been here before. Trying to convince the little shits that going down to the creepy tunnels and burning them was _not_ a good idea. But them just… lying in a bathtub can’t be dangerous, can it? Can it?

“Okay,” Jonathan says, finally. The kids smile. And then Nancy is reading out the list of items they need (salt, how much fucking salt?) and she’s organising each of them, giving each of them tasks. They’ll all split up and find what they need around the house - all of them, that is, except for Steve.

“It’s either you or me. They’ll recognise Jonathan,” Nancy says, apologetically, as he follows Jonathan into his room for his work outfit, which apparently looks very similar to what the high school janitors wear. “And- well-”

“I look more believable as a janitor?” Steve responds, arching an eyebrow, but he accepts the clothes from Jonathan without complaint. “I like your room,” Steve says to him, because he does. Posters, books everywhere, and is that a photo of Steve and Nancy? He’s leaning forward to take a closer look when the phone rings, and all three of them jump out of their skins. 

After a brief, frightened hesitation, Jonathan runs to answer it. Steve comes to stand in the doorway, arms crossed. Will and El are looking on nervously too. It’s kind of ridiculous, really, because it’s late morning now and there’s no reason someone _can’t_ call. It’s probably just that guy from the diner, calling to chew out Mrs. Byers even further, or someone from the high school wondering where three of its students are today.

But Jonathan goes tense, and his eyes meet Nancy’s. _Owens_ , he mouths. Well, shit.

Well, _shit_ , because Jonathan’s face has dropped into a well of panic now. “ _What?”_ he manages. He’s gone pale and it looks like he’s barely holding himself upright. Without thinking Steve moves closer, in case he needs someone to lean on. “How? What the hell happened? I don’t-”

More silence. Jonathan is twisting the cord of the phone around his hand in agitation.

Then, “Tell me where.” He frantically motions for a pen and paper and Nancy fumbles to pass him her notebook.

He nods along as Owens apparently gives him an address, furiously scribbling it down, and then he hangs up. He looks like he’s aged about ten years in the last two minutes. They all look at him cautiously; it’s Will who steps forward and asks, “What is it?”

Jonathan scrubs a hand over his face and looks at him. The look in his eyes sends a thrill of fear down Steve’s spine; it’s despairing, full of raw panic and grief. “It’s Mom.”

El lets out something that sounds like a whimper. Nancy steps forward and slips her hand into Jonathan’s. Jonathan swallows visibly before continuing: “She’s in hospital. She- something happened. They’re back from Russia.”

“Something happened? What happened?” Nancy questions. 

Jonathan looks at her hopelessly. He’s shaking. “I don’t know. God- it’s-” He looks at the kids and suddenly Steve understands that he doesn’t want them to know. For whatever reason- maybe he doesn’t want to upset them-

And all of a sudden Steve is reminded of himself. Himself, at nine, coming downstairs on a Monday morning before school to find his mother on the floor, unconscious in a pool of her own vomit, because she’d had too many of the anxiety pills she doesn’t technically have a prescription for, chased by too many martinis. His dad had arrived shortly after while Steve was frozen, stuck in place like a statue just _staring_ because this was his _mom_ , the most elegant woman he’d ever seen, reduced to a barely-breathing mess on the cool hardwood floor. His dad shunted him off to the side, told him to go straight to school. When Steve protested that he hadn’t had breakfast - he seemed only able to focus on trivial things like that, when confronted with his mom like this - his dad’s voice had gone harsh and cold and it became clear that it was more of an order than a question.

He spent the whole day at school distracted and distant. When Tommy H kicked him in the shins for ignoring Carol’s question, he just shrugged, and when he couldn’t read aloud in English class because he didn’t know where they were in the book, he got detention. And when he got home that evening he found his mom sitting upright on the sofa, pale and listless with a hospital bracelet still around her wrist. She smiled at him distantly: “How was your day at school?” And he went to the kitchen and threw up in the sink.

He doesn’t know why he thought of that. He hasn’t thought about it in years. But there’s something of that in Jonathan’s face now, he thinks. 

He takes his half-empty pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and nods to the door. Jonathan seems to get the inference. He hesitates for a moment, looking at Nancy - and it’s not like Steve doesn’t know why, because this is probably a conversation he’d rather be having with her - but then he follows Steve out the door. It’s cold but sunny outside, roughly midday. He leans against the wall and lights a cigarette, taking a drag before offering it to Jonathan. Jonathan looks at him for a moment before taking it. HIs fingers are trembling. 

“So what happened?” Steve probes gently.

Jonathan lets out a smoky, frustrated sigh. “She- I don’t know. She had some kind of- of seizure? It was something to do with blood sugar, Owens said, but now she’s not making any sense and they think-”

His voice breaks. There are tears in his eyes. When he goes to return the cigarette, Steve lets his fingers hover over Jonathan’s for a moment longer than necessary. It’s not much comfort, but he wants to help. “What do they think?” he risks asking.

Jonathan stares out at the snowy road ahead. “She’s been struggling the last few months, I’m not- I’m not gonna deny that.” He doesn’t look at Steve at all; Steve realises that he isn’t even thinking about who he’s talking to. It makes sense. Jonathan would never talk to Steve like this, not really. He just wants to talk to _someone._ “She was on meds, but I didn’t think-” Finally he looks at Steve with a frighteningly blank expression. “They think it’s some kind of mental break.”

“Jesus,” Steve whispers. The cigarette falls from his fingers. “I didn’t-” He recalls the rumors, of course. The commonly held belief that Joyce Byers went over the edge in 1983, and never quite made it back. And it’s not like Steve didn’t believe them - right up until he actually met her in 1984, when she stitched up the cuts on his face with steady hands despite her reddened, haunted eyes. The thought that-

“I have to go see her. I have to- I have to know what this is. You and Nancy stay here with Will and El-”

El. Suddenly Steve is struck by a thought, lightning-quick and horrible. “What if it’s a trap?”

Jonathan’s distracted gaze snaps to his. “What?”

“What if… What if they’re still in Russia? El was certain they were in Russia, maybe she’d know if they’d left? Maybe this is all about El. They’re still after her, right? What if this is how they find her? By- by convincing us that your mom’s in trouble?”

He’s frowning. “But Owens helped us with the paperwork for El. He doesn’t need to- to do any of that.” He runs a trembling hand through his hair. “No, this is- I think this is real. Maybe there’s something else going on but- I have to find out. I have to see her.”

Steve looks at him helplessly. He’s thinking about the way he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as his mom for weeks and weeks after that morning when he found her on the floor. He reaches out and touches Jonathan’s arm. “Okay. What if… what if there isn’t anything else going on?”

Jonathan stares at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean- what if it is what they say? What if it is… a mental break?” He winces to say it.

“No. _No._ ” Jonathan is shaking his head, adamant defiance in his eyes. “Mom isn’t…” _Crazy,_ the silence fills in for both of them. He rounds on Steve, and now there’s anger, and accusation in his face. “I’m not giving up on her.”

“I didn’t say-”

He scoffs. “No, but I think you meant it. I haven’t forgotten what you said about her.”

Pretending not to understand would just prolong the inevitable; Steve knows exactly what he’s talking about. _I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised, I mean, a bunch of screw-ups in your family, I mean, your mom-_

And other comments, comments that Jonathan didn’t hear but probably knows about anyway. Steve regrets them, bitterly regrets them, but- “That isn’t- I’m sorry about that. You know I’m sorry about that.”

Jonathan is wringing his hand, looking tense and nervous. “Yeah, but that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Right now, you’re thinking _why is he so surprised, his mom’s always been crazy_. Aren’t you.” He glares at Steve.

“I’m not, Jonathan, seriously, I’m not-” He reaches out for Jonathan. Jonathan pulls away.

“Look, I’m gonna go. I need to- I need to go. Look after Will and El, okay?” 

Steve works his jaw, hands fisted in his pockets. He doesn’t like this, any of it. But babysitting is something he’s apparently pretty good at, so. He nods.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Phil Callahan has been working at Hawkins PD for four years now, and he can say pretty confidently that he’s seen some shit. There was a time when the worst thing he ever encountered was the bird in Eleanor Gillespie’s hair, and she tried to get him suspended afterwards because instead of helping he just doubled over laughing until his stomach cramped, but that time is long gone. Will Byers - who was definitely dead, by the way, the corpse they pulled out of the quarry was wearing the _exact same clothes_ for god’s sake - came back to life. And thirty people, including the chief, died in a mall fire? Which Hawkins PD wasn’t even allowed to deal with, because the staties came in.

Not that Callahan minded. He went home and watched _Miami Vice_ instead, because at that point he didn’t know the Chief was involved. That he found out later. He was invited to the funeral - closed-casket, probably horribly disfigured - and ate stale ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off in the corner of the wake as Joyce Byers had some sort of breakdown in her car and the Chief’s ex wife left because she wanted to make Pittsburgh that night.

But he’s seen some shit. Which is why the Andy Reed thing doesn’t unnerve him all that much. 

The new Chief won’t shut up about it, though. They picked the guy up last night and put him in an ambulance; then Randall talked to him and decided that Pennhurst would be more appropriate. Ranting and raving about _other worlds_ \- the guy was clearly batshit crazy. The fact that it happened in the same stretch of woods where they found Will Byers’ bike two years ago - well. Sheer coincidence.

But it’s nearly six pm and the Chief is still talking about it. “...issue with this town. No one does anything, do they? You all just sit there, for heaven’s sake. No wonder it’s falling apart. If I wasn’t here Andy Reed wouldn’t have got the help he needed, would he? You’d have just sent him off home like everything’s fine.”

Callahan, whose shift is nearly over, nods dolefully. “Yeah, probably.”

Randall lights a cigarette and blows smoke into Callahan’s face, hopefully by accident. “Still, I like to think I’ve installed some law and order.”

“Yeah, sure.” Callahan’s barely listening. He really does not like the guy. Hopper could be a hardass but at least Hopper never arrived before nine thirty and could take a joke. Callahan inputs his name at the bottom of the paperwork he’s filing and stretches, hoping Randall will take the hint. He doesn’t, of course. “Hey, listen, I’m gonna get going,” he says finally.

Randall frowns at him. There’s a moment of silence where Callahan is sure he won’t be allowed to escape; but finally he gets the nod of permission. He can’t get out of there fast enough. He grabs his coat and his keys and hits the road - but not to his own place. He swings by the store for a six pack of Schlitz and then drives to Powell’s place.

Powell opens the door with a bucket of KFC in his hands and grins. “Wasn’t sure you were gonna make it,” he says, leading Callahan inside. 

“Yeah, well, for a second there I felt like Randall was gonna keep me all night. God, he’s an asshole.”

“You’re telling me,” Powell says, wryly, raising an eyebrow. Of course. 

“How’s suspension treating you?” 

He slumps on the couch and takes a bite of chicken, then says with his mouth full, “Honestly, you’re gonna say I’m crazy, but I kinda miss the job. I’m getting as fat as the Chief stuck at home all day. The old Chief, I mean.” He looks glum.

“Man, I miss the guy. He was never this bad.”

“No, he sure wasn’t.”

Callahan looks at him. “So are they bringing you back? Or…?”

“Nah. Not for a while. Man, the Sinclairs aren’t even worth it but it was about the principle of the thing, you know? And now I’m hung out to dry while he goes around preaching bullshit about ‘cleaning up the town.’”

Callahan makes a low noise of commiseration. Powell stood up for the Sinclairs when Randall tried to hand them a hefty fine for nothing in particular; Randall didn’t take too well to it. “Sucks, man. It really does.” He waits the appropriate silence, then, “So shall we watch the game?”

They watch the game and forget all about Randall in the process, drinking Schlitz and finishing off Powell’s KFC. It’s when he’s walking back home, feeling light and airy on three beers, that he thinks about how if it had been Randall in charge of the Will Byers case, Joyce Byers would be in Pennhurst right now and Will would never have been found.

Hopper was a good one, he thinks. Mostly. Which is better than a lot of people. 

He digs his hands into his pockets against the chill in the air and notices absently that he’s walking down Cornwallis. The universe wants him to think about Will Byers tonight, huh. The trees are rustling in the dark and there are no streetlights down here - he shivers. It’s more than a little creepy.

But then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees something. Far off in the trees, a spot of light. Something golden and warm. He frowns at it, but he can’t quite make it out from here. It fills his chest with a weird feeling, though - something comfortable. Warm, and it’s so cold outside, and he’s had such a long and boring day.

He walks towards it.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

In Eau Claire, on the Wisconsin side of Minneapolis, they sweep past a motel with _VACANCY_ emblazoned on its side in the sinking dusk and decide wordlessly that this is their best shot for the night. They pull into the parking lot and Mrs. Wheeler pays for two rooms. Robin tries not to shiver when Kali grabs one of the keys and nods at her significantly - she’s _definitely_ reading too much into this. Still, it’s nice. The room has two narrow beds side by side; Karen tells them to get some sleep, while neither Max nor Mike looks too happy with the sleeping arrangements. And then the door closes, and they’re alone together.

They look at each other for a moment silently. It’s not as awkward as it was the other night. Kali is faintly smiling and Robin flushes under her gaze, toying with her bracelets. She’s still blushing when she comes out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, changed into her customary baggy t shirt and shorts, to find Kali in her Bruce Springsteen t shirt waiting for her, looking small and soft in the evening light. “Hi,” she says, as Robin sits down opposite her on her own bed. “I- I have a question.”

She frowns. “What is it?”

“You- do you trust me?” There’s something fragile and pained in Kali’s face. 

“What? I don’t-”

“-Because I’m not- I am not a good person. I have done bad things.”

“What kind of bad things?” Robin’s voice is barely a whisper; she looks at Kali apprehensively.

There’s a hesitation. “I hurt people.” Kali’s voice is quiet too. “I hurt people to escape the lab, in 1980. And then I hurt people because they deserved it. And I don’t feel bad about it.”

Robin looks at her for a long moment. She’s staring into the middle distance, something shadowed in her eyes. Her fingers are worrying at the duvet beneath her and on impulse Robin goes to sit beside her, the mattress dipping as she moves. “They deserved it? What did they do?”

Kali doesn’t break eye contact, her gaze dark and serious, as she lifts her arm and exposes the tattoo on her wrist. Robin hesitates for a moment, but there’s permission in her face. She shifts closer and traces her fingers over it, just lightly. She feels Kali shiver. “You don’t want to know,” Kali says quietly. “No one should have to know. But those people- most of them are gone. This is why I have to find Jane. To keep her safe.”

“You know, one time in freshman year this boy, he called me a-” Her voice breaks, but she doesn’t even think to stop. She’s not going to stop. “He called me something awful, and then poured orange soda over my head. My hair was sticky for a week and he ruined my favorite t shirt, it was a Led Zeppelin t shirt-”

Kali is frowning, her lips pressed together with something that looks like sympathy. Or empathy, maybe.

“I never did anything about it. I never- got my revenge, or whatever. I just let him keep going around being a fucking dickhead. And I regret it so much.”

“Revenge doesn’t always help,” Kali says. Her voice is quiet. “I believed it did for a long time. I was filled with anger but now I’m just- afraid. I want Jane to be safe.”

“But you stopped them hurting anyone else,” Robin says. The vision of Kali as a vengeful murderer doesn’t square with the girl soft and clean in front of her - though Robin doesn’t really struggle to believe it. El threw a car with her mind; there’s no lengths the government wouldn’t go to to harness that kind of power. Power like Kali’s. And if they’re not around anymore-

Robin doesn’t blame her.

There’s a small smile on Kali’s face. “Yes,” she says. “I did.”

It comes to Robin’s attention that she’s still holding Kali’s wrist. Cheeks aflame, she pulls back and fiddles with the hem of her shorts instead. After a long silence that probably isn’t awkward but she feels like it is anyway, she blurts out, “Do you like music?”

Kali raises an eyebrow. Robin feels like a fool. “It depends what kind.”

“Right, right, of course. I- um-” She reaches over to her bag, by the side of her bed, and takes out her walkman. Her headphones are loud enough that two people can listen. She holds them up: Kali nods. Q Lazzarus’ _Goodbye Horses_ cassette is still inside - one of her favorite songs. When the opening notes come in the awkward tension goes out of her. Music never fails to make her feel better.

     _You say, "All things pass into the night"_  
_And I say, "Oh no sir I must say you're wrong”_

She sings along with a smile, her face so close to Kali’s as they listen through one earpiece that she can see the smudge on her ear where the ink of her tattoo has bled. Initially Kali’s brow is furrowed, like she’s trying to make sense of the sound, but soon her shoulders relax too, and she almost begins to- sway?

_Dangerous game,_ Robin thinks, as she lets her limbs melt into the rhythm. If Steve was here he’d definitely be making fun of her right now, and deriding her for not being _cool_ , _how the hell are you gonna pick up girls with your weird jelly-dancing, Buckley?_ and she has to repress her grin at the phrase _jelly-dancing,_ and what does he know, anyway? What the hell does he know?

     _I've seen the sky just begin to fall_  
_And you say, "All things pass into the night"_  
_I must disagree, oh no sir, I must say you're wrong"_

Kali is still so close to her. They’re dancing together, now, the headphones held between them letting out the tinny, perfect sound. Robin is singing and Kali is smiling and she’s not sure who moves first. Really, she doesn’t know. All she knows is the taste of Kali’s lips when they’re on hers, and the shiver that runs down her spine at the touch of Kali’s tongue. 

Kali’s hand comes up to tangle in her hair. The walkman falls to the floor and lands soundlessly on the carpet but Robin doesn’t care all that much, not when Kali’s kisses move down to her jaw and then graze her neck, carefully but so, so good-

“I’ve never- I haven’t-” Robin gets out, voice breathy and hitching with every word, “This is-”

“Shh,” Kali murmurs, looking up at her with a glint in her eyes. “Is this what you want?”

_God, yes._ A million fucking times yes. This is everything she’s wanted for- “Yes.”

“Well, then. You don’t need to talk.” 

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

It’s dark outside when Jonathan drives to the hospital. Nancy sits beside him, silent but _there_ , an offer of comfort in case he needs it. He doesn’t need it, not yet. He hopes he won’t when they return. 

Cassville is the name of the county hospital’s psych ward. It’s branded in big, rigid letters over the entrance. Jonathan looks at it and then looks down just as quick. His eyes find Owens standing in the doorway waiting for him, lit orange in the sickly cast of the lights, and he swallows a knot of fear in his throat. 

“Do you want me to come with you?” Nancy whispers.

Resolutely, he puts the car in park. “No,” he says, because if this really is as bad as they all think it is- “No,” he says again, even though he really wants to hold her hand. Hold her hand and never let go again, because it’s been so long. It’s been way too long. But he leaves her behind, her large worried eyes, and goes over to Owens.

“Jonathan. How are you doing.” His tone is flat, cursory. He looks very, very tired and there’s a scrape on his jaw. 

Jonathan ignores him. “What the hell happened?”

Owens starts walking inside; Jonathan follows him. Several corridors, several patients with haunted looks flash past. “As you know, we went to Russia. We didn’t find what we were looking for. We flew back over here, and we’d just crossed the county line, when your mom-” He breaks off and clears his throat. “She had the seizure, like I said on the phone. Her blood sugar had dropped… we brought her to the hospital but when she woke up, she was…”

“Not making sense,” Jonathan says, coldly. “What does that mean?”

He shakes his head. “It’s hard to explain. You need to talk to her.” On cue they arrive outside a door just like the rest; the only difference is that there’s a doctor in a white coat waiting outside it. He nods at Owens deferentially.

“Dr. Owens. Jonathan Byers, I assume?”

“It’s Horowitz,” he mumbles. There’s a sudden thrill of fear threatening to swallow him. 

“Okay, sure. Well, I assume Dr. Owens has briefed you?” 

He nods, not meeting the doctor’s eyes. He _hates_ doctors. “I still don’t understand. What do you mean she wasn’t making sense?” he presses, desperately. 

“Obviously it’s far too early to tell, but it could be some form of paranoid schizophrenia,” the doctor says, by way of explanation. Jonathan wants to hit him. It’s not- it’s not that. He knows it’s not that. It can’t be that.

One time when he was nine his mom took him to see her Aunt Darlene, in a similar place to this. White walls and hunted looks, pill bottles rattling. Lonnie drove them there, waited for them in the car, a lazy hand hanging out the window and a faraway contemptuous look in his eyes. Will was at a sleepover.

He still doesn’t know why Joyce brought him. Darlene died - an overdose, suicide - a month later, almost like she was waiting - or almost like his mom knew, and that’s why she brought him along, to meet the ‘crazy aunt’ at last. Darlene spent the whole visit looking at something invisible over his shoulder, wits blunted by medication, hands shaking with a permanent tremor. As they were leaving she grabbed him by the shoulders and looked urgently into his eyes and said nothing, only stared, like she had something she wanted to tell him only she couldn’t get the words out.

In the car Lonnie twisted to look at him in the backseat, breathing out a puff of smoke that made his eyes water, and said, “Darlene’s crazy, has been crazy for a long time, only she didn’t have a husband to take care of her so she wound up here. See, that’s what happens when there’s no man of the house.” 

His mom rolled her eyes. “The doctor said it was biological-”

“You gotta have a man of the house, babe. Or else it fucks you up.”

That was paranoid schizophrenia, Jonathan knows. Darlene was in the institution long enough for them to be sure. Long enough for her to become a cautionary tale, something for Lonnie to hurl at his mom over the dinner table, or when she kicked him out for the first time, or when he found her mid-panic attack when Jonathan couldn’t calm her down. _Jesus Christ, you’re such a schizo._ He’s heard it often enough to know that she’s not. To know that whatever she is - anxious, overprotective, attuned to things the rest of the world can’t see - she’s not that. It’s not paranoia, they say, if something’s really out there.

“Son,” Owens starts, like he’s _Pop,_ like he has any right or say. “I think-”

“I don’t care what you think,” Jonathan says, compulsively lighting a cigarette. It tastes foul and he’s reminded of why he leaves the smoking to his mom - but apparently he’s Kassandra now, so he should play the part. “She’s not crazy.”

“We prefer not to use that term-” 

He glares at the doctor and beside him Owens sighs. “Let me handle this,” he says, with a long-suffering paternal air, and the doctor flees gratefully. “Jonathan-”

“No. You- what the hell? You think- you really think- after everything- after what you did to Will, after what you put him through- you said that was all in his head too, didn’t you? But it wasn’t. It _wasn’t._ What if it’s like that for Mom?”

“Son-”

“Don’t call me son.”

Owens sighs again. “What happened in Russia- what we saw- it was awful. After everything your mom’s been through, I wouldn’t be surprised if-”

“If what. If she- what, lost her mind?” He shakes his head. “No.” No. His mom’s the strongest person he’s ever known, of this he has no doubt. Owens can go fuck himself.

“She was on medication, wasn’t she? But she’d stopped taking it.” Jonathan grits his teeth and stares hard at the floor, because yeah, she had, and that’s his fault. Doesn’t mean- “The medication could have been hiding her symptoms for a while.”

“Don’t you learn _anything?_ After everything-” Jonathan stops and takes a deep breath. “Mom’s been called crazy at least a thousand times in the last few years and every single time, she’s been right. There’s something else going on here.”

Owens just looks at him for a long moment. His eyes are unreadable. “Alright, go in and see her. Maybe- maybe you’re right. I just don’t want it to crush you if you’re not.”

Jonathan brushes past him with a glare. He’s been through enough, parents-wise, that might have crushed him. He’s sure he’ll survive whatever this is.

His mom is curled up in a wicker chair by the window, next to what is apparently her bed. She’s smoking, silhouetted against the light, and he can see her hand faintly trembling as it holds the cigarette. She’s not in her own clothes - she’s wearing some dark blue sweatshirt and what look like hospital-issue gray sweatpants. The baggy clothes do nothing for her already tiny frame: she looks smaller and more fragile than ever. (Fragile! He thinks, with a curse. She’s never been _fragile._ )

“Mom,” he lets out, and she turns. 

“Jonathan,” she whispers, and then he runs to her. He hugs her hard and is relieved when she hugs back even harder, and then he sits on the bed and takes her hands in his. 

“What happened, Mom? What-” He gestures vaguely to the room, the building around him. The reinforced glass of the window in the door.

She shakes her head. There’s a bitter, terrifying smile creeping across her face. “I can’t, Jonathan. I can’t- I can’t tell you. I _can’t._ ”

“Why not? Mom?” There’s a fresh streak of gray in her hair, where before it was stubbornly brown. She’s thirty-eight. Surely she’s too young for gray, and that quickly? There’s something going on here. He was right, he _has to have_ _been right_ \- the sinister edge in the air can’t just be his imagination, can it? Can it?

“It would consume you,” she whispers. “It-” She shudders. “It consumes worlds.”

“Mom-” He moves from the bed to the floor, kneeling before her, moving his hands up to her arms. “What’s going on? What did you see?”

He’s hit on something. At the word _see_ her whole body flinches and then she stares at him, stares at him like his Great-Aunt Darlene stared at him ten years ago. It was something in Russia, he thinks. It has to have been something in Russia. As for why they’ve decided she’s psychotic- well. Some things are too strange to be believed. But if even Owens-

“I saw-” She swallows visibly. “Jonathan, I saw _everything._ It showed me everything. I don’t even- I don’t even have the words to explain it-”

“‘It’?”

“ _It._ The- The Eye. It sees- God, it sees so much. It drove my aunt mad.”

“Darlene?” That’s got his attention, if nothing else. When she was just weighing so heavily on his mind- “What’s this got to do with Aunt Darlene?”

His mom shakes her head mutely. “I don’t know, Jonathan, I don’t know. All I know is- there’s all this _shit_ in my head, now, so many different worlds- different versions of me… and you…”

“Different versions- what-“

“...and Hopper…”

Jonathan’s spine tenses for a whole new reason. Shit. _Shit_ , he hasn’t told her. He hasn’t told her about Will, about his powers, about Will and El’s efforts to get Hopper back. She went all the way to Russia and she didn’t find anything except a monster, which has to be crushing. He’s not sure he can face crushing her further if Will can’t come through.

His mom’s distant expression focuses. Her gaze meets his and her eyes shine with tears. “We didn’t find Hopper,” she whispers, and whatever his feelings about the guy Jonathan has to take her in his arms and let her cry. “He- he wasn’t there-“

“I know,” he says, like one shushing a child. “I know.”

She weeps and he soothes and then eventually they have to come back to the matter at hand, because she whispers “I’m not crazy,” into his neck. “I’m not. What I saw is real.”

And he nods, because he believes her, really he does. He believes her because of what happened last night and maybe they’re all losing their minds together but that’s okay. That’s okay. Because they’re the only ones who know the truth.

“I’m gonna get you out of here,” he says. “Owens- Owens is useless, but if I can convince him-“

She shakes her head. “That’s not important. You just- you have to _stop it._ Tell me you’ll stop it.”

It’s his turn to shake his head, helplessly. “How- how do I do that?”

“I don’t know. But you need to- you need to keep Will and El safe- and don’t let Owens near them. Especially El.”

“What? Why not?” He thinks back to earlier, to the way he defended Owens to Steve, adamant that it wasn’t a trap. _But Owens helped us with the paperwork for El. He doesn’t need to- to do any of that._ Maybe he was wrong.

“He’s a liar. Russia wasn’t about Hop at all, and Brenner- Brenner’s still alive. _You have to keep El safe._ ”

The revelations come flying at him and each one makes him panic a little bit more. Shit, he left El and Will with Steve back at the house- he left them and now he’s here, practically _asking_ for the government men to follow him home to discover them- “Okay,” he says, breathlessly. “I will.”

He’s made many promises to his mom over the years. Most of them, he’s kept. He’s feeling like this might be the toughest one yet. 

After hugging her tight again, her frame so small and bony in his arms, he leaves her there. It causes a great, ugly lump of guilt to rise up in his throat, but he swallows it down. She wants him to protect El and Will, first and foremost. She’s always put herself second - but she’s safe here. Isn’t she?

Safe from Brenner. Safe from _it_ , whatever _it_ is. (He thinks about _seeing_. He thinks about the demodogs that disintegrated like smoke, about the rapturous expression on Steve’s face as a different life played on a reel behind his eyelids. Maybe it isn’t in Russia. Maybe it’s already here.)

Outside he gives Owens a distrustful look. “Where’s Murray?” 

“He’s helping me out with a little project. He sends his regards.” Yeah, like that fills him with goddamn confidence. “Look, I’ve been called away, but I’ll be in touch, okay? Don’t worry about the bill for this place, I’ll sort it for you.”

“Thanks,” Jonathan says spitefully. _Called away. A little project._ Everything Owens says feels more and more suspicious. 

“Son-”

Jonathan gives him a look. Owens sighs.

“Jonathan- you keep that girl safe, okay?”

He freezes. Owens’ gaze is earnest, serious. Worried, even, like he actually cares about the girl he’s talking about - El, because there is no other ‘girl’ - like he doesn’t want to throw her to the wolves- throw her to _Brenner_ \- “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, quietly.

Owens rubs his lined forehead with his thumb. “Sure you don’t. Sure you don’t. I’m on your side, Jonathan. I need you to see that.”

Jonathan scoffs. “Okay,” he says, and then he leaves.

“So? How was it?” Nancy asks, when he gets in the car, slamming the door and slumping over the steering wheel, feeling all the weight of the last few days - years - pressing down on him. 

“I think whatever- whatever we saw, whatever is in that old building- it somehow got my mom. She saw things- I think she saw things the way you and Steve saw things. _Different worlds_ , she said.”

Her eyes are wide when he turns to look at her. “So she’s not…”

“No, she’s not.” Jonathan doesn’t want anyone ever to finish that sentence. So many people have tried and it’s always been hovering in the air, waiting for that final word, the word his mom’s heard so often - but it’s not true. She’s not crazy. She’s _right._ “They didn’t find Hopper. And she told me that- that Brenner is alive.”

“Holy shit, okay, we have to get back for El-”

He takes a deep breath and pulls himself together. Nancy’s right, because El’s in danger now, greater danger than before. They all are, not only from Brenner but from whatever the fuck _it_ is. So he starts the car, and they drive the forty minutes home in fraught, anxious silence. He catches himself edging the speed limit more than once, his heart pounding in his chest. They’ve only been gone a few hours - nothing can have happened in that time, right?

He only lets himself breathe when they’re home and opening the door on Will and El and Steve standing whole and unharmed in the hall, and is that the kiddie pool?

“Hey, man,” Steve says, turning to wave, before he continues with what he was doing, which was dumping several heavy bags of salt into the pool. He’s wearing Jonathan’s work outfit, which is a little too small for him. Will is attaching a length of hosepipe to the tap in the kitchen, and El is standing by, ready, with a box of eggs. 

Okay, so apparently they’re doing this. Jonathan looks at them helplessly for a moment but Nancy has definitely rubbed off on them, all three of them, because there’s an unstoppable quality about their calm, purposeful movements. “Are you gonna help or are you just gonna stand there?” Steve says, pausing to stand up straight and wipe sweat from his forehead. 

Jonathan narrows his eyes. But Nancy moves forward and after a moment so does he. There’s music playing - with a start Jonathan recognises it as his own, from his Panasonic sitting on a chair in the corner of the room. _Somebody Told Me,_ from his _Sweet Dreams_ Eurythmics cassette. A favorite of El’s, for sure. Less so for Will or for Steve, he’s sure, but they’re all nodding their heads along.

Together they fill the pool. Salt, warm water, cold water, more salt. Will sits by the tap and El floats eggs in the pool until finally the buoyancy is right - just right. The thought that they’re doing this- while Brenner is out there, while _something else_ is out there-

But El wants her dad back. Jonathan can’t deny her that.

     _You're just twisted_  
_I'm a silly little saint_  
_With a halo of smiles_  
_But it makes no-_

Annie Lennox’s voice cuts out as he turns the boombox off; the sudden silence echoes around the room. He comes back over to stand in front of the pool as Will and El both climb in, blindfolds over their eyes, hands forever linked. God, this is deep shit. 

Steve comes to stand beside him, Nancy on Steve’s other side. There’s a thick knot of fear in Jonathan’s throat. (He can’t remember the last time there wasn’t.) “Good luck,” Nancy whispers, and the two kids lie down in the water with barely a ripple. Jonathan’s breathing sounds unnaturally loud in his ears-

But then there’s a hand on his.

Steve’s hand is large and warm. His skin is smooth, and he entwines his fingers with Jonathan’s like it’s almost… natural? Jonathan looks at him, startled, but Steve’s eyes are focused, determined, on the pool in front of them. Jonathan breathes out some of the tension in his spine and tries to let Steve’s touch ground him.

Surprisingly, it actually kind of works.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Max’s dreams are dark and twisted that night. She sees the cave in the woods, its yawning darkness staring at her, and then out of that void emerges Billy, dripping in blood with a face like thunder. She wakes with her heart pounding and looks around the silent, darkened room. Mike is snoring gently on the sofa; Mrs. Wheeler is asleep in the other bed. 

She takes several deep breaths before getting up and going to the bathroom to splash water on her face. She always feels weird, nauseous after these nightmares. She has them all the time. If it’s not Billy she sees then it’s Neil, and those ones are often scarier. The Billy ones just make her want to throw up with guilt.

When she’s done hunching white-knuckled over the sink, trying not to cry because then her face will be blotchy and because of her complexion it won’t fade for twenty-four hours so everyone will know, she lies back down. 

She’s only been in bed for another five minutes before there’s a rapid knock on the door, loud in the silence, and she jolts up. It’s still dark outside- what the _hell-_

The knocking continues. Mrs. Wheeler and Mike start to stir. Swallowing her fear, Max stands up and goes to open it.

She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that it’s Kali and Robin, standing there in pyjamas and hastily-thrown-on coats, looking tired and panicky. “What happened?” Max asks, squinting at them in the glare of the orange overhead light. It’s starting to snow.

“We’re being followed,” Kali says, pushing her way into the room.

“ _What?”_

“I had a dream-”

“A dream? What- are you sure?” Mrs. Wheeler looks doubtful in the gloom, her usually-perfect hair limp and sleep-mussed. 

“Yes,” and this comes from Robin, not Kali. Max takes a moment to wonder at how they apparently share thoughts now before Mike comes up, looking incredibly sleepy and even more mad. 

“What the hell is going on?”

“We need to leave,” Kali says. “ _Right. Now.”_

“Who is it? Who’s following us?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” 

Mike shoves his way past her and goes out to the parking lot, still in his pyjamas. Max follows him and scans the rows of cars, the closed doors of the other rooms in the courtyard. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s dark, gloomy in the dim orange light, with flurries of snow swirling in the air. Max shivers in the cold and stares out into the dark, wondering who might be watching them. Wondering if there’s anyone there at all.

“Holy shit,” Mike says.

She turns to him. “What is it?”

He’s looking at a car several yards away. Max doesn’t recognise it - Mike clearly does. Or else he recognises the man asleep in the front seat. “That’s who was following us,” he says. His voice is full of disgust. 

“Who is it?”

“Will’s dad.”

Her jaw drops. She digs her hands deeper into her pockets, making fists out of them, digging her nails into her palm. She knows it’s Will’s dad, logically she knows it’s Will’s dad, but suddenly in her mind’s eye it’s Neil she’s looking at instead. Her dream comes back to her, the spectre of Billy dripping blood as he stares at her. Sometimes Billy and Neil look exactly the same to her, and she hates herself for it.

“Is that-” Mrs. Wheeler has come up soundlessly behind them. Her eyes are fixed on Will’s dad’s car. There’s a weird look on her face. “Is he the one who was following us?” She turns to look at Kali, who shakes her head helplessly. She doesn’t know.

“What should we-” Robin starts, but Mrs. Wheeler is already moving. Her shoes crunch on the freshly fallen snow. “Is this a good idea?”

Mike shrugs, and Max stares after her. This really _isn’t_ a good idea. Mr. Byers isn’t Neil - but maybe he is.

Still, they all follow Mrs. Wheeler at a distance, and watch as she raps her hand on the windscreen and Mr. Byers jolts up with a startled, terrified look. Something’s got him spooked, it’s obvious. He drags himself out of the car and says something quietly to Mrs. Wheeler; despite herself Max draws closer, wanting to hear.

“...don’t understand, I have to talk to Joyce-”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you. If she did she would have given you her address.” Mrs. Wheeler’s voice is hard, surprisingly so. She’s crossed her arms over her chest. And she’s bluffing, Max knows this, because none of them knew where the Byers moved - or at least, none of them could remember. 

“For fuck’s sake-” Mr. Byers says, with wild eyes, and Max flinches automatically. A gentle hand lands on her shoulder and she turns to see Kali beside her, silent but with a sort of understanding look in her eyes. “She’s the only one who can explain this shit. This is her, I know it’s her, it goes back to all- to all the shit with the lights-”

“The lights?” Mrs. Wheeler asks, but when Max looks at Mike his eyes are wide and knowing. There’s a grave note of fear in him, the same fear he had in 1984, the same he had in the summer of 1985. Like maybe Mr. Byers is involved with this too. 

“I couldn’t find out where she moved. I followed you, so sue me- just tell me where she is. Please?” His smile, when he really tries it on, is winning. Max can sense Mrs. Wheeler falling for it, bit by bit. He has a certain easy charm - but she can recognise it for what it is. He could easily turn ugly, just like Neil turns ugly, just like Billy turned ugly despite all the girls liking him, despite all the guys wanting to be his friend. 

Kali is silently shaking her head; Robin, by her side, is looking like she’d defer to Kali in anything. Max isn’t happy about this. Neither is Mike, by the look on his face - but she knew this would happen someday. The kids being forced to obey the adult. The adult in question being Mrs. Wheeler, PTA mom, wife of a Republican voter, and only recent inductee into the horror show that is the Upside Down. (Recent being… maybe yesterday? Max has lost all track of time.) 

Finally, the dreaded words come. “Okay, but if Joyce doesn’t want to see you-”

Mr. Byers raises his hands in surrender. “I just want to talk to her. That’s all I ask.”

Max narrows her eyes at him. There’s something off about him, more than the Neil thing, more than the lingering cruelty behind his eyes - this kind of manic, desperate energy. Almost inhuman.

But the decision has been made.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Something wakes her up, and she’s not sure what it is.

Joyce sits up slowly, her every nerve thrumming with unspoken tension. Granted, it’s hard to feel relaxed in a place like this. The nighttime lighting in the hallway that’s a pale simulation of darkness; the sounds of orderlies walking past outside. She scratches at the edge of the bandaid where her IV was only a few hours ago - _replacing fluids_ , someone in the ER said, before the words slipped out and they transferred her to the psych ward. _Only temporary_ , was the next thing they said, but not to her. When you’re a psych patient they don’t tend to talk to you, she’s noticed - they talk around you, to whoever else is listening, even to the empty air above your head. Or maybe it’s just her.

She barely remembers how she got here. She remembers the flight from Russia, sitting across from Owens in furious silence while he stewed in agitation because they were returning with a Soviet defector rather than the demogorgon, as he’d wanted. She remembers the three of them, her and Owens and Murray, driving back up to Minnesota together even though the thought of Owens getting anywhere near her children made her skin crawl-

And then the county line. And then nothing.

Or rather, everything.

She represses a shudder and digs her nails into her skin. If she thinks about it too long her head begins to swim and - on cue - her nose begins to bleed. She reaches for a tissue from the nightstand and wipes at it wearily, without the strength to consider what it might mean. She vaguely recalls someone carrying her somewhere, Murray maybe, her head lolling back against his chest and blood streaming down her face into his shirt. And then waking up in a hospital bed and not knowing who she was looking at, not caring, just letting the words pour out of her until there were none left. She told them everything she saw.

And now she’s in the psych ward.

Murray she hasn’t seen since she slipped into unconsciousness in his arms; Owens she’s seen only once. They’ve abandoned her, which shouldn’t be surprising but somehow still stings. _I’m not crazy._ Once upon a time no one believed her and once upon a time she saved Will anyway. She had no one then; and now she’s told Jonathan to leave her, to keep El safe. So she has no one now.

The room is dark and still and silent. The sounds from the hallway outside are muffled, barely there. She wants to light a cigarette, add to the already overflowing ashtray by her bed, but they took her zippo away. She’s considering asking an orderly for a light when she feels it - a rising, thrumming tide of _something_ at the back of her head. She probes at it warily. A flash of images: the back of a man’s blond head, pastel-colored skirts swirling around dancing women’s calves, and music - Frankie Valli, if she’s not mistaken, crooning faintly, ringing with a distorted echo that sets her teeth on edge. 

She’s still looking into the dark, but it’s like the fabric of the world has gotten thin. She can see something beneath it, like a veil, and with her heart in her throat she reaches for it-

It tears away like paper, and then she’s emerging into a hall that is achingly familiar. That pink and gold banner, _Congratulations, Hawkins High Class of ‘66!,_ that limp balloon arch under which Billy Trevor the gangly sophomore is snapping polaroids of giddy graduating seniors. It’s picture perfect, a postcard of her past - only it’s more than that; it’s _real._

She steps forward uncertainly. She spots Chrissy Carpenter by the bowl of punch, clearly the lookout as Jack Hyde pours what looks like vodka in it. Huh, she’d always wondered who was responsible for that. 

This isn’t a memory. It’s rich with details, spooling out in front of her like a zoetrope. She looks around and some faces she recognises and some she doesn’t, mostly because they’ve dissolved from her memory completely. This was nearly twenty years ago, now. It’s a long time with lots that’s happened in between.

Still, she doesn’t know why she’s here. Why is she here? Is this another dream-vision, like It showed her before? Another trembling, fragile reality whose Joyce isn’t Joyce at all? 

It doesn’t feel like that, though. It’s depressingly, reassuringly real. And when she turns and the crowd parts and she spots herself, both feelings just increase.

Joyce, young Joyce, has her head tilted up, her jaw in a sharp, defiant line. Her hair is black and curly to her chin - she dyed it sophomore year and kept on dyeing it until she married Lonnie, Joyce remembers - and her dress, a rare sight on her even at eighteen, is two tone: a black off-the-shoulder top and a rose-pink skirt. Looking at herself now, Joyce realises that she looked pretty. She didn’t feel pretty. She felt anxious, skittish, confined. 

Young Joyce isn’t wearing any makeup because she’s just spent the last half hour washing it off in the bathroom, because it was streaked all over her face in teartracks. The half hour before _that_ she spent in a screaming match with Lonnie, then twenty-two, right outside the entrance where everyone could see. 

Her eyes aren’t even red but everyone looks at her with hesitant kid gloves anyway, some more snide that others. Chrissy is sniggering by the punch, Joyce knows that without looking, because she remembers it clear as day. And she remembers this, too: striding to Hopper’s side, grabbing his cup of punch spiked with filched whiskey and downing it in one, and asking him to dance. 

From this angle it looks braver and less stupid than it was. Because it was stupid; Joyce wasn’t blind, she’d seen the way he looked at her. She looked at him that way too sometimes. Getting drunk with him and dancing with him the very same night she and Lonnie broke up (for the first time of many) was never a good idea.

Joyce watches as Hopper, the young Hopper, tall and fit and cocky, dances her younger self around the room. No one can see her, it’s clear - she’s quite the incongruous sight, twenty years older than everyone in the room, wearing hospital sweatpants. But no one blinks.

She still doesn’t know why she’s here, watching her younger self make the mistakes she made time and time again. Breaking up with Lonnie not firmly enough; dancing with a man marked for death by the days ticking down on the calendar until his shipment out to Vietnam.

She watches Hopper lean close to the young Joyce and whisper something into her ear. She can nearly feel it, his hot breath on her bare neck, his lips just barely brushing her skin, and she shivers. But then her eye catches on something behind them, something that doesn’t make sense-

She knows that pattern of flannel. Bright red, white, and blue, and completely incongruous in a sea of dated black tie and swirling dresses in seasonal satin yellow. Sure enough, when Joyce steps closer she can see the girl’s face: El. El is here. How the hell-

And behind her, Will too. _Will too._ And this is not good, this isn’t- This is meant to be her burden to bear, this whole thing, the thing with her _seeing_ things. The fact that they’re here-

Their eyes are on Hopper and her younger self, watching with rapt attention, even awe. It doesn’t appear that anyone can see them either. It would be obvious, if they could - two freshman-aged kids in bright, anachronistic clothing with way too much curiosity in their faces. Joyce’s senior year was a mean bunch, she remembers. They never liked outsiders. They didn’t like Joyce much either, though in those days Joyce had the kind of attitude that many of them couldn’t help but respect. 

The crowd is still watching Hopper and her younger self. There’s scorn hovering in the air; it’s as unsurprising now as it was then. Joyce was from the wrong side of the tracks, poor and Jewish in a town at the edge of the bible belt, already seen as a few steps from the edge of _crazy;_ Hopper was decent, respectable, middle-class, the blond sports star going off to fight the Viet Cong and defend the world from the evils of Communism. Their friendship wasn’t exactly a secret but they rarely flaunted it to the world. They certainly never did anything like this.

Joyce watches herself twirl in Hopper’s arms. She’d never have done something like this if not for alcohol; she was scornful and defiant but never this bold. Less famous than infamous - but that wasn’t really her fault. She was different, and that was enough.

Will and El are still watching them, and it’s clear to her that they can’t see her either. She wishes they could, because she needs to know why they’re here. She needs to know why _she’s_ here. She needs to know what’s going on. 

And then, with a horrible sinking feeling in her gut, she remembers what happens next.

She watches as Hopper whispers to young Joyce again, his lips nearly tracing her jawline like a fucking tease, and young Joyce grabs his hand and leads him outside. Drawn on inevitably like a puppet on a string, Joyce has no choice but to follow. And so do the kids, whispering to each other indistinctly. She aches to reach out to them- she hopes they’re okay- she hasn’t seen them since-

“I broke up with Lonnie.” She rounds the corner to find young Joyce sitting on the steps with Hopper beside her, a smoke already between her lips. 

“Yeah, Joyce, I know. Everyone knows.” Hopper’s voice is still gruff, but smoother than it is now. Was? God. It’s a little reminder that sends a chill racing through her. _We didn’t find him-_

Maybe this is why she’s here. 

“Fuck off, no one knows shit,” her younger self scoffs; Joyce could recite the words herself, if she chose. “No one likes Lonnie but they like him more than they like me.”

She’s aware of Will and El standing beside her. Suddenly she wants to take them away, far away from this, where they can’t witness her making yet another litany of mistakes. Where it isn’t so fucking obvious that their mom - because she considers herself El’s mom almost as much as she is Will’s - was a mess. (Is a mess?)

“That’s not-”

“True? Yes, it is. Don’t you lie to me, Jim Hopper. Not- not tonight.” And, well- here it is. Young Joyce is leaning closer, skin glowing pale under the moonlight. The end of her cigarette glows in the dark as she removes it from her mouth. Hopper’s profile, sharp and patrician, is silhouetted as he moves towards her too-

Joyce turns away. She doesn’t need to watch this. She doesn’t want to. She can hear Frank Sinatra’s _It Was A Very Good Year_ playing softly from the hall, a slow song for the couples no doubt. She thinks of herself in that golden kitchen, Mrs. Joyce Hopper, mother of Jonathan and Charlotte. Maybe that was still on the cards, tonight. Maybe she could have been a soldier’s wife - or a soldier’s widow. She’s seen the world in which she married Hopper and he never came home. She’s seen it all.

She remembers what the kiss was like without having to look. The faint scrape of his five o’clock shadow, his large hand coming up to tangle in her hair none too gently. The way she whimpered into his mouth when he tugged her into his lap. Wryly, she hopes Will and El have stopped looking. This is hardly something for them to see. 

The kiss doesn’t last all that long, she remembers this too. Hopper managed to trail a path down her throat that left a mark in the morning; she managed to mess up his slicked back hair with her tangling fingers. They leave their mark on each other - but it doesn’t last. 

They’re interrupted. Joyce finds herself mouthing it - _“Hey, Hopper! What are you- Oh!”_ \- Jack Hyde, smug and swaying drunkenly, bursting upon them like the triumphant detective in an Agatha Christie. 

Hopper and her younger self spring apart; young Joyce drops her cigarette as she flees back inside; Hopper runs a hand through his hair and - Joyce notes with some wry amusement - shifts to conceal his lap. “We were just-”

“Hey, I don’t blame ya, Hopper. She’s hot. Just don’t cross Byers, okay? Sounds like he’s pretty liberal with that switchblade of his.”

“Noted,” Hopper says. “I’m just gonna- I’m gonna finish my cigarette.”

Jack shrugs and goes back inside. And then Joyce sits down on the steps beside Hopper, young Hopper, eighteen year old Hopper - and her, weary and aching at thirty-eight. Behind her Will and El are still there but she doesn’t look at them. This is about Hopper, she’s sure of it. 

He looks out at the moonlit parking lot, pinching the cigarette between thumb and forefinger like it’s a joint. “Christ, Joyce,” he whispers to himself. “How the fuck am I supposed to go to ‘Nam now?”

She feels cold. This is what she missed, going back inside. The fact that maybe- just maybe- one fleeting kiss, the only one they’ve ever shared, lodged his heart right here in Hawkins.

It’s unthinkable. She never had that power over him. It was sexual, the way he looked at her back then, nothing more. Nothing else. Right? 

But the wistfulness in his expression as he looks up at the clouded stars-

And then she feels something else. A creeping darkness, a sinking feeling in her gut. The feeling of all the lights going dark after _R-U-N._ Like dropping on a rollercoaster, and she’s never liked rollercoasters. 

She scans the dark parking lot. It’s less peaceful than threatening, now. There’s something sinister in the air. 

Then a sound - a sound she recognises. One she heard in Russia. Claws on tarmac. Claws on tarmac, and then a quiet, chilling screech. The demogorgon.

And she’s pretty sure there was never a demogorgon in the real 1966. Just like Will wasn’t here, or El, or Joyce as this Joyce, as a tired thirty-eight year old. Which means one of them has brought it with them. And somehow in her gut she knows it’s not her.

Which means Will and El - Will and El who don’t seem to have noticed it at all, when she risks a glance around - are messing with something more dangerous than they realise. Something evil, more sinister than revisiting their mother’s painful memories. 

Something she needs to protect them from.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

It’s when they’re heading back inside, _false alarm_ , red herring and all that jazz, that Robin looks at a shiny black car just nudging around the corner and feels a chill run down her spine. She stops walking and stares at it. It’s just a black car, a sedan- there are hundreds of thousands, probably millions of those on the road in this country- 

But she remembers Kali’s dream. She remembers Kali waking up beside her with a jolt and several harsh breaths, the wild look in her eyes, _we need to leave._ She wouldn’t get that feeling from Will’s dad, would she? Would she?

Kali clearly notices her absence, because she’s back by her side in a moment. Robin has to resist the urge to flush when she looks at her, at her hair still mussed, her lips still slightly swollen- 

But that’s not important right now. “What if you were right?” she says, in an undertone.

Kali frowns, but there’s a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. “You think there’s someone else?”

“Yeah.” Carefully she nods to the sedan. On closer inspection it appears empty, but you can never be too careful. Slowly, they approach it. Kali, so soft a half hour ago, is now rigid and alert. Robin feels the instinct to stick close to her - not only because of the inevitable magnetism, only worsened by the taste of Kali’s lips, but because right now Kali’s energy is that of a soldier, and it makes Robin feel safe.

When they’re close enough to read the license plate, Kali’s lip curls and a deep disgust comes into her eyes. “I know that plate,” she says quietly. “They didn’t know I had it. This is a government car.”

Robin’s stomach sinks. She thinks of Hawkins Lab, that big gaping building with doorways like dark wounds. The Russians were bad but it’s highly likely that her own government is worse.

She’s not expecting, however, what Kali does next. She drops into a crouch by the car and pulls out a long, deadly switchblade - _she was carrying that around with her?_ \- and proceeds to make a vicious slash in one of the front tyres. Air hisses out; the car sinks almost imperceptibly. “Is this a good idea?” Robin hisses, as Kali rounds the car to the next tyre.

Kali doesn’t answer, just focuses the full force of her gaze on her task. For the first time Robin is able to square this Kali - the one who carries a switchblade and looks around like everything’s a threat - with the Kali soft and pliant in bed that night. 

She’s moving onto the third tyre, Robin standing helplessly by as a lookout, when there’s movement in her peripheral vision and she turns around fast - too fast, because clearly it looks suspicious and the man emerging from the room gets an ugly expression. “What are you doing?” he asks, coldly. It’s the middle of the night but he looks unruffled, dressed in a dark overcoat with-

A hand in his pocket. And Robin’s seen enough movies to know what that means.

“Kali-” she whispers, risking a glance back at her. Kali looks up, but too late - the man (agent?) is already striding towards them, and he’s- god, he’s taking the gun out of his pocket-

Then several things happen at once. Kali gets to her feet and waves her hand; something startled comes into the man’s eyes; _startled_ doesn’t make him any less dangerous, because then he starts to shoot. And suddenly Kali’s hand is on her arm dragging her backwards, dragging her away, gunshots ringing out in the motel courtyard with thunderous, violent volume, and it’s only when they make it to the other motel room that Robin registers that she’s bleeding.

Fuck, she’s bleeding.

And then all at once the pain hits like a bolt of fucking lightning and it’s all she can do slump to the floor and try not to pass out from it. Then there are hands on her and “What the hell happened?”, someone is saying, maybe Mike? and Max’s pale face suddenly looms above her like a moon with a horrified expression, “Shit, that’s a lot of blood,” and Mrs. Wheeler’s usually sensible voice cracking with panic, “We need to take her to a hospital-”

“No hospital.” Kali’s voice is like iron. Robin notices through the haze of pain that she’s relieved; she hates hospitals. “We need to leave. Right. Now. I can hide us from them as we escape but they are looking for us.”

“We can’t just-”

“She’s right. They _shot_ Robin. Going to the hospital would be like surrendering to them.”

“This our government, they can’t just-”

“Yes. They can.”

There’s a fraught silence. Robin drags her eyes open to see Mrs. Wheeler and Mike facing off above her. Mrs. Wheeler isn’t going to win. And true enough after a moment she sighs, heavily: “Let’s go, then.”

Mike nods tightly. Somehow he and Mrs. Wheeler prop her between them and help her into the car; she finds herself too weak to stand. And then they’re driving off into the night with Kali’s hands digging into the wound, putting pressure on it, (she guesses) preventing her bleeding out. Kali’s face is taut and her eyes are shining in the glow of the streetlamps flashing past. Robin wants to kiss that look off her face, but she doesn’t have the strength.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Max is repeating under her breath. “We’ll make it to Will’s house and then everything’s gonna be fine- Jesus Christ.”

_I got shot,_ Robin thinks over the roar of the pain jostling for attention in her head. _They shot me. What the fuck._

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“We should keep going,” El says, when the young Hopper has gone back inside. Will is stood still, staring at the spot Hopper’s just left, something almost like wonder in his face. She gets it. It’s one thing to see Hopper and Joyce’s images frozen in time as eighteen year olds on a small, dusty polaroid; it’s quite another to have them living and breathing in front of them, using the kind of language that would get Will or El grounded.

Kissing, even. 

And that’s the missing piece of the puzzle. Because there was always _something_ in the way her dad talked about Joyce, especially in the months leading up to July when everything went wrong. It just makes El more determined to find him, because he and Joyce clearly have some unfinished business.

“Will,” she urges. He looks at her. “We’re not going to find him here. But maybe- somewhere else.”

“She broke up with him,” he says instead. “She broke up with my dad… and this thing with Hopper…” His eyes are suspiciously shiny. She reaches out and grabs his arm. 

“We don’t know everything,” she reminds him. “Let’s find Hopper. Then we can talk to Mom about it.”

_Mom._ He seems to relent at that, nodding tearily, and as her grip tightens on his wrist the world around them dissolves. She thinks about Hopper - not the cocky teenager whose world they’ve just left but _her_ Hopper, older, grizzled like he was when she saw him last in that vision. It’s that Hopper they’re looking for.

-But instead they emerge in a grassy field by a river under a scorching summer sun, and there’s a blond child, a boy, standing with his feet in the water skipping pebbles across the surface. She knows with sudden, solid certainty that it’s her dad, younger again. No older than nine.

She moves closer, still holding Will’s wrist and tugging him with her. The young Hopper is staring across the rippling water with reddened eyes. As she watches, he wipes at his nose with his bare wrist and sniffs. He looks lost, and young, and lonely. She wants to reach out to him- but then there’s a voice, calling across the field, and all three of them turn.

“Jimmy!” There’s a woman coming down the field with a suitcase in her hand. She’s tall, blonde. Pretty. “Time to go.”

He doesn’t move. “Why do we have to leave Hawkins, Ma? I don’t wanna go.”

The woman - his Ma - sighs. “You know why, Jimmy, we’ve talked about this. Your dad’s got that new job, remember?”

“But that’s not it, is it?” Hopper walks towards her, the pebbles crunching under his wet bare feet. “It’s about what happened.”

El frowns as the woman’s hand comes up to her face, as if to hide some part of it from view. It doesn’t seem like she even knows she’s doing it. “Don’t be silly, Jimmy, it’s got nothing to do with that,” she snaps, unnecessarily harshly. El looks over at Hopper and sees him wiping furiously at his eyes again. 

“If you’d just leave the asshole-” he mutters under his breath. His Ma doesn’t seem to hear him. He follows her up the field, through the long grass swaying around him, leaving El and Will behind. She wants to go after him, she wants to so desperately… _It’s about what happened._ What happened? What is it?

“El,” Will says. It’s his turn to tug her away. “He’s not here either.”

“But…” 

He looks at her with big eyes. Right now he looks so much like Joyce and El misses her, suddenly. Just like she misses her dad. 

“Okay,” she allows, and lets him take her hand again. And then the sun-bleached field dissolves and her vision fills with green. They’re in a forest, tropical like in the movies, the air so hot and humid it feels like they’re underwater. Once again she looks for Hopper, her Hopper. She doesn’t find him.

Instead-

Gunfire. So sudden she flinches as it shatters the silence, loud and rattling and violent. She and Will look at each other and then, as one, they duck into the cover of a tree and watch the clearing with their breaths held, waiting. They can’t get hurt here, can they? But if they can feel the weight of the waves of heat… If El can feel the sweat dripping down her back under her flannel…

Then two soldiers enter their field of view, dragging another between them. They stop in the clearing and one of them sheds his helmet and wipes his sweaty, bloody, brow, revealing blond hair buzzed to the scalp and that profile she recognises. Hopper, looking no older than he did at prom but a lot more tired. 

The other soldier removes his helmet; El doesn’t recognise him. “We should just kill him.”

“What the fuck, no, we’re taking him back to camp like we talked about-“ Hopper’s voice is vaguely desperate. The man propped between them is short and barely keeping his eyes open. He’s their prisoner, clearly: El knows enough about the war to recognise him as Vietnamese. 

“C’mon, Hopper, do you really wanna carry him for the next ten miles? Skirting landmines? Avoiding the traps these nasty buggers set up?”

“He’s on our side!” Oh, so not a prisoner. “We’re not goddamn killing him-“

The other American pulls out his gun and aims it at the man on the ground. El sucks in a breath. Hopper’s taking his gun out too, but he’s aiming it loosely, non-committal. 

“Don’t do it, Anderson,” he says, voice low. A warning.

“Why the fuck shouldn’t I? He’s probably gonna die from some god awful infection he picked up in this fucking jungle anyway, I’m doing him a favor-“

“Don’t. Do it.”

The second Anderson twitches his gun up so it points at Hopper, Hopper shoots. Anderson falls, lifeless, dead. El stares in shock. Will is nudging her arm and it’s not so much the killing she minds, really. She’s killed too. And this was to save somebody else, not just himself, so it’s better. But it’s still… him. Hopper, eighteen year old Hopper. Cocky no longer: now he just looks scared. Scared and increasingly old. 

Increasingly _old._

She dives out of the leaves and grasps for him desperately but he slips through her fingers like smoke and leaves her alone in darkness - so close but not quite. So close.

But he’s gone, her Hopper is _gone_ again when she was so near to reaching him-

Will is beside her again. “This isn’t working,” she says to him. Her voice is thick with tears and frustration.

“I know,” he says quietly. He stares into the darkness, at the jungle leaves still slowly dissolving into night. “What if… what if it’s about setting?”

She frowns at him.

“I mean… when I used Teleport for the first time, I went from the bathrooms at school to the school bathrooms in Hawkins. And the next time- I was up on the cliffs overlooking Lake Superior, and then I went to the cliffs on its other shore, in Canada.” His eyes are alive, excited. “What if we need the right environment?”

“Russia,” she says, slowly. “Where- is like Russia?”

He smiles. “I have an idea.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

After what feels like hours, Steve, Jonathan, and Nancy slowly unlink hands. Jonathan is still rapt, staring at his brother and his- well, his sister lying prone in the pool together, so Steve and Nancy leave for the kitchen with bated breath, unwilling to disturb them. In the kitchen Nancy turns to Steve with this _look_ , the one he’s oh-so-familiar with, and he doesn’t even sigh. 

“We need to help Joyce,” is the first thing she says. Her jaw is already in a taut, defiant line. “She’s stuck there- she’s not crazy, I know she’s not, it’s ridiculous- we have to help her-”

“Okay,” he says. 

She stares at him, eyes wide like she didn’t expect him to agree. “What?”

“Okay. Let’s do it. Jonathan and the kids are busy here, there’s nothing we can do- so let’s go.”

Nancy looks at him silently for another incredulous moment, before apparently shaking it off. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Three minutes later they’re driving off into the dark, Nancy consulting the map in shotgun and the whole thing giving him an eerie sense of deja-vu. The hospital is around forty minutes away - forty minutes of fraught, tense silence. Laura Branigan’s _Self Control_ plays on the radio for a bit, but when it fades into Olivia Newton John Nancy reaches out and turns it off. Still, the lyrics ricochet around his head for the rest of the journey. 

     _I, I live among the creatures of the night_  
_I haven't got the will to try and fight_  
_Against a new tomorrow, so I guess I'll just believe it_  
_That tomorrow never comes_  
_A safe night, I'm living in the forest of my dream_  
_I know the night is not as it would seem_  
_I must believe in something, so I'll make myself believe it_  
_That this night will never go_

And then they’re pulling up outside the hospital, orange-lit and looming in the dark, and automatically he reaches for his bat. But he can’t use it, not here. Not against human enemies. Not against things wearing human faces, whether they’re human or not. He’s never had to test his limits but he knows them well enough. His dad is evil but some part of him still loves the guy; humans are often that evil but they’re still _human._

Nancy gives him a look. He can’t bring the bat - that much he reads in her eyes. That much is obvious. But still.

Inside, Nancy does some convincing sweet-talking with the night shift receptionist, who is bleary-eyed and unenthusiastic. But she lets them in, and then they’re off down the hallway with no real plan beyond here. “How are we gonna do this?” he asks, in an undertone. “We can’t just walk out of here with her.”

Nancy shoots him a look. “I’m working on it,” she says. The hallways are strangely empty, darkened for this time of night. They pass a few nurses who don’t meet their eyes, glimpse a few patients through doors left ajar, but no one questions them. It’s almost too easy. 

When they reach the right room, Steve hesitates for a moment. He shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t. But he doesn’t know what they’re going to find. Jonathan says she’s not crazy but Jonathan’s her son, of course he’s going to say that - and in all honesty, if Mrs. Byers has gone a little crazy then Steve wouldn’t blame her. Not after everything. Sometimes he feels a little crazy too.

Still, he swallows all this down and goes to the door. He glances at Nancy, who nods, looking around covertly to make sure no one’s watching, and then places his hand on the door handle. But before he can turn it it opens anyway and then he’s face to face with Joyce Byers herself, looking dishevelled and dangerous with a jagged shard of glass held aloft in her hand. 

“Whoa, Mrs. Byers,” he says, taking an inadvertent step back.

She blinks at him and lowers the glass. A frail drip of blood falls from between her fingers. “Steve?”

Then Nancy’s hurrying them all back into the room, hissing “Someone’s coming,” and he’s taking in how sparse it is, how clinical it is, and the desperation in Joyce’s eyes. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, quietly. 

“Coming to get you,” Nancy says. She gestures to the shard of glass: “What- what are you doing with that?” 

Joyce looks down at it like she’d forgotten it was there. “I have to get to Will- It’s going to try and stop me.”

A chill drips down his spine. “‘It’?”

She looks straight at him with a bitter quirk of her mouth; he notices that there’s blood on her upper lip, and grays in her hair that weren’t there last September. “I can’t explain it to you, I- I _can’t._ But Will is in danger- he’s messing with things he doesn’t understand- we have to _get to him-_ ”

The pool. El and Will sinking into the water like eerie twins. Jonathan watching them with nothing but that shotgun to protect them- His sudden fear must register in his eyes, because Nancy grabs his arm as she questions Joyce further: “What do you mean it’s going to try and stop you?”

Joyce casts a look at the closed door, at the hallway beyond. There’s a faint tremor in her hands and she still hasn’t let go of the glass shard. It’s faintly curved, like she got hold of a glass somehow and smashed it. “I don’t know, exactly. But I know it wants me to stay here. I just- I don’t know why.”

“How do you know?”

She looks at them both frankly. “You wouldn’t believe me.” 

Nancy opens her mouth to argue but _It’s going to try and stop me_ is still ringing around his head and he’s not sure he’d like to stick around to find out what that means. “Let’s go,” he says. Joyce nods tightly. “Is there another way out of here?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t- I’ve been in this room the whole time.”

“Fire exit,” Nancy says. “There’s gotta be a fire exit.”

So that’s the plan. Sure enough, there’s a fire escape plan pasted to the wall by the door. Steve goes over to it and studies the map of the building. It’s simple enough - but then he has to rub his eyes and pinch himself, to make sure he’s not dreaming, because the map begins to change. The solid outlined walls swirl into a different pattern, a more complex one, and he’s left staring at a fire exit that must be four hundred yards of hallway away. His stomach drops down to his toes. 

“What is it?” Nancy asks, coming closer.

“The same thing that happened when we arrived here. I think- Nance, I think there’s something wrong about this town.” He looks over at Joyce; she doesn’t look surprised. Just exhausted, and resigned. There’s a fresh spot of blood on her lip. 

“We need to go,” she says, quietly. Wearily. “Please.”

“Okay,” he says, looking at Nancy significantly. She’s not the best at winging it; he’s been winging it since that night in 1983 when he saved their asses with nothing but a spiked bat and a whole lot of stupid bravado. He can do this. They’ll be fine. 

The corridor is empty. Steve inches his way out after Nancy, wishing more than anything he had his bat. Who knows what they’ll find - maybe nothing. Maybe phantoms of the mind like at that ruin of a government building, the one he’s increasingly suspecting to be the one in his name. 

Joyce follows them down the corridor. Steve can’t explain it but there’s this kind of- _stillness_ about her, something he’d never have associated with her before. It’s like she’s resigned to whatever will happen, despite her trembling hand wrapped around the shard of glass. Despite the desperation in her eyes. It’s weird. It’s weird, and it makes him think of Barb, and Eddie Money, and an endless summer sky-

He can almost taste Nancy’s lipstick before he yanks himself out of the thought, so seductive, so inviting, _dangerous._ He looks around the hallway instead, clenching his fist, lacking a weapon. God, he should have brought the bat. But they haven’t met anyone or anything, not yet. The coast is clear.

The coast is clear, until-

They round the corner. They round the corner, and waiting for them is a field of nurses, patients too, apparently minding their own business but the second Nancy lets out a tiny gasp they all look up, all as one, at least thirty sets of eyes on them-

They stand there at an impasse for a moment. None of the figures move for one long, long second. Steve can feel his insides shrivelling up because they’re not _human_ , none of them, they’re not human, wearing human faces- round, staring eyes looming out from the dark-

Then Joyce whispers hoarsely, “Run.” 

It takes a second for his feet to catch up with his brain but then he’s running, running back the other way, hoping that the mythical fire exit will be somewhere, anywhere along here-

They all stop. Why have they _stopped-_

There are two people standing in their way. ‘People’ is a loose term, really, because they’re people-shaped but nothing about their eyes is human. Nothing. They stand there in scrubs staring passively, almost mockingly, challenging them to escape. _You can’t escape._

Steve shifts towards them; they mirror his step forward. There’s only two yards between them now. But they’re blocking the corridor and they’re just human (right?) but they look solid. Unmoving. “Wait,” he says quietly, trying not to move his lips. One of them cocks its head like it’s _curious._

This is so fucking-

Nancy darts forward without warning, apparently intending to shove her way past them, but they’re like iron and she tumbles to the ground. And Steve can’t just let this happen so he rushes forward too and out of the corner of his eye he sees Joyce do the same - and then he’s grappling with something that has fists like steel and within a second he’s pinned to the floor with an inhuman grip on his throat.

He chokes out wordless cries for help. His vision begins to white out. The eyes above him are dead, lifeless, the eyes of a corpse-

And then the pressure lifts off. He gasps for breath as he watches- _god._ Joyce drives the shard of glass into its neck, sending a shower of blood through the air, droplets splattering on her face, her throat jolting with something that’s probably a sob.

The other person - person? - is a limp huddle on the floor in another pool of blood. Nancy looks at him from where she’s crouched near it, and then all of a sudden grabs for his hand. “We need to go,” she hisses, and her voice is shaking. He remembers vaguely what she told him about the hospital, and Tom and Bruce, and the way she murdered some people who weren’t people at all but it still felt _horrible_ \- and there’s some of that in her now. In Joyce, too. 

“Let’s _go,”_ she hisses again. He struggles to his feet and then they’re off again, running down the hallway, leaving bloody footprints from where he stepped in the puddle-

A corridor down he’s vaguely aware of Joyce stopping, Nancy too, and his feet want to keep on going but he’s not just gonna fucking leave them. Joyce is pointing at the first aid kit attached to the wall and Nancy is taking it down like Joyce knows something, like Joyce thinks they’re gonna need it.

He swallows painfully. And then they’re off again, running, still too slow for his liking because Joyce is short and while Nancy is short too she’s quick, young, determined. His heart sinks when Joyce stops again by a bare wall, panting for breath with her nose bleeding even more. “C’mon, we need to- we need to find a way out-” 

She shakes her head. “This is it,” she says. “It’s- it’s not real. The wall. This is the exit.”

He stares at her for a moment like she’s lost her mind, but Nancy is already moving towards the wall and in a flash he remembers that hidden road among the trees, and that lighthouse he’d only been able to see if he tried really, really hard-

Nancy moves into the wall and just like that she disappears. Not like she sinks into it, like quicksand or water - like she simply winks out of existence. He tries not to panic and doesn’t really succeed. 

Joyce is looking at him carefully. “Steve? It’s not real. What It shows you- it’s not real.”

He bites his lip hard enough that he tastes blood, thinks about his dad loving him, Nancy still wanting to be by his side. And then he opens his eyes and the wall is a wall no more - it’s a fire exit, opening out into the freezing night air, Nancy waiting with wide eyes and one hand on her gun. He goes through it.

Joyce is right behind him. In the car, shooting off into the night, terrified that those not-human humans with eyes like knives are following - but they’re not. The road behind them is silent and still.

Joyce curls into herself in the backseat as Nancy unloads and reloads her gun and Steve tries to keep his hands from trembling on the wheel. How does he trust his eyes now? How does he trust _anything_ now? Maybe their escape was an illusion. Maybe they’re still trapped in that hallway of eyes, prey to whatever illusions it wants. 

“How did you know all that?” he asks, looking at Joyce in the rearview mirror. She meets his eyes and wipes more blood from her nose. Her eyes are reddened, her hands shaking. She just killed someone. 

“If I knew how to put it in words, Steve, they wouldn’t think I was crazy.”

After that they drive in silence.

As they turn down into the driveway to the house, he gets a horrible sinking feeling in his gut. He looks around for a reason but finds none - until he realises that Jonathan’s car is missing.

Jonathan’s car is missing. 

“Where-” Nancy hisses, abortively, hurling herself out of the car and towards the house. Joyce follows closely - which means Steve is the last person to enter the house, and the last person to see the pool steadily deflating with nobody in it.

Jonathan, Will, and El are gone.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Dustin is wrestling with the urge to call Mr. Clarke and demand the Cerebro part _right now, m’lord, because it’s been Tuesday for four hours and seven minutes already and I really really need it_ when there’s a voice on his Supercomm and he reaches to answer it so fast he nearly falls off his bed. When he’s righted himself he grabs it and listens - it’s Erica.

“Erica? What are you doing with Lucas’ radio? Over.”

“Shut up with the ‘over’ bullshit, nerd. Why are you awake?”

Because he’s really fucking worried about El and the rest of the party, that’s why, but he’s not gonna say that to her.

“Why am I awake? Why the hell are you awake? You’re the one who’s radioing me, remember.” He lies back and tries to repress a frown at Erica having Lucas’ Supercomm. It doesn’t mean anything, right? Lucas probably just left it lying around (since he doesn’t care anymore). 

“I’m worried about Lucas,” she admits, so quietly he can barely hear her.

“What?” he sits up. “What’s happened to Lucas?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know. He left for school this morning and he still hasn’t come back. I lied to our parents about it, said he was going to stay at your house and just forgot to tell you so he’s probably gonna get grounded when he comes back from wherever the hell he is - but yeah, I lied to them because I guessed it was to do with the Upside Down, and we’re not allowed to tell adults, right?”

“Right,” he says. “Right, that’s good, good thinking…” His mind is racing overtime. Lucas is _missing?_ What if- what if it’s like in 1983, when Will went missing? When the demogorgon took him? What if it’s happening again? “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Ten minutes sees him tiptoeing up the Sinclairs’ stairs, Erica short and furious leading the way. He winces as a floorboard creaks and stands there frozen, convinced that Mr. or Mrs. Sinclair will emerge and ensure he’s grounded til kingdom come, but nothing happens. After several deep breaths, he follows Erica all the way up the stairs and into Lucas’ room. It looks the same as always. Nothing out of place, nothing at all. Dustin scans it carefully and feels any fragment of hope he had held begin to disappear- until he looks closer at the desk. Stacked up on it are local mapbooks, and a heavy book called _Indiana Geology_ open on the chapter on _Speleology_ , which makes him frown because he’s pretty sure Lucas cares about basketball, not caves. 

The mapbooks are all open on the same page - a page Dustin recognises. The woods between Steve’s house and Will’s old house. There’s really only one conclusion to draw: he picks up the nearest book and shows it to Erica. “We need to go here.”

“What, now?” she looks unimpressed, even as he can see the worry in her eyes. 

“Yes, now. You wanna save Lucas, don’t you?”

“Save?” Her eyes widen. “Save him from what?”

He sighs. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean that. He’s probably fine, okay? Let’s just go and make sure.”

Silently, still wide-eyed, Erica nods. Five minutes later she’s bundled up in winter clothing, including a bright pink puffer, and they’re sneaking out the door. Dustin considers telling her to stay here but he knows she’d never listen to him - so they bike over there together in the dark, Erica much surer on her bike now at eleven than she was three years ago, at eight, when she was still on training wheels and _really_ mad about it. He has to repress a grin at the memory.

The grin soon fades, however. Soon they’re facing the trees, the woods looming high above them, his flashlight barely piercing the darkness beneath. He’s reminded of another night, in another time. The four of them going out into the woods in the rain to look for Will and instead finding someone much stranger. He glances at Erica - _are you ready?_ \- and she nods, even though there’s fear on her face.

And then they enter the woods.

He makes sure Erica sticks close to him the whole way. They could find anything out here - or nothing. That’s the scariest thought, that they might find nothing. Lucas might be gone without a trace, like Will, only they don’t have El or her powers to find him, not this time. He might be gone forever.

But he buries these fears deep down. Erica, despite her brash facade, seems ready to spook. And he needs her not to spook.

“Hey, Erica?” he says, tentatively. “How’s your DnD campaign going?”

She glances over at him. “Good, it’s good,” she says listlessly. 

“C’mon, no war stories for me? No glorious battles, no tragic defeats?” 

This earns him a raised eyebrow. “The only thing _tragic_ is how much of a nerd you-”

She stops still. He turns to see what she’s looking at and- 

Well. It’s a cave. A horrible cave, more than a cave, a cave that seems to suck in all the light of his flashlight until they’re drowning in the dark-

“Lucas!” she shouts, suddenly brave. She moves towards it and his arm shoots out to hold her back. He doesn’t like this, any of it. That cave is sitting there like a black hole, absorbing light rather than reflecting it, and Erica’s acting like she wants to go _in_ there-

“Lucas,” she says again, but it’s quieter, _relieved._

And there he is.

He emerges from the blackness of the cave, blinking, looking about him like he doesn’t know where he is. His bandana is tied around his head and he’s got his backpack on his shoulders - looking like a man on a mission, who’s forgotten what his mission even was. Dustin stares at him. “Lucas?”

“Dustin?” 

Dustin droops in relief. For a moment there- he was convinced that Lucas wouldn’t know him. That Lucas had forgotten. “What happened? Where have you been?”

Lucas blinks at him, then at Erica, in the dark. Finally he responds: “I don’t know.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

There’s no clue to where Jonathan, Will, and El might have gone. The three of them turn the house upside down searching - but there’s nothing. Finally Nancy resorts to pacing the length of the hallway as Steve and Joyce share a cigarette. “We should drive out and look for them,” she bursts out, turning to them desperately.

“And where the hell are we gonna look? We don’t know where to start,” Steve says, defeat in his voice. She crosses her arms and glares at him, because of course he’s resigned to this. 

“I’m just saying, there’s nothing to be gained by just _sitting_ here and- what if it was Brenner?”

She sees Joyce swallow. But Joyce says nothing, just watches them with fingers faintly trembling around her cigarette. 

Taking a deep breath, Nancy continues. “What if he took them? What if they took Jonathan’s car like they took Barb’s car, to make it look like they left when really-”

“So what do we do?” Steve says, gesturing helplessly. “What-”

Joyce interrupts him. “What were they doing with the pool?” she asks quietly. Her eyes are sharp and intent. 

Nancy swallows. Of course. Hopper- they haven’t told her about Hopper- “Will can somehow bring some of El’s powers back, so they- they were-”

“They were looking for Hopper,” Steve says plainly. 

She cringes, sure that Joyce will react badly, maybe even hysterically - but she just nods and says, with a voice that trembles only a little, “Hopefully they had more luck than I did.”

“Okay, so- so what do we do, do we call Owens?” he says, looking between them. “Do we-”

“No,” Joyce says firmly. “Owens is a liar, and if- if this is Brenner-” She takes another drag of her cigarette. “If this is Brenner, then we can’t trust anyone, not even Owens.”

She’s putting on a pretty effective facade of calm rationality, but Nancy can see underneath it, to the way her fingers shake, to the way her eyes are fixed on the door like any second men with machine guns will burst through it. There’s a streak of gray in her hair, one that wasn’t there before. 

Nancy nods. “We should-”

And then there’s the sound of an engine. All three of them go tense, rigid. Nancy picks up Jonathan’s shotgun, left propped against the wall, and holds it ready. Steve approaches the window and lifts the corner of the curtain just barely to peer out- and then he’s letting out a gasp and rushing out the door, nail bat forgotten, and Nancy follows him to see-

Her mom’s car. Is that her _mom’s_ car? 

Still holding the shotgun, she runs out. True enough, her mom is emerging from the car, looking flustered and frantic, _“Nancy,”_ but then she can’t focus on that anymore because there’s a girl she doesn’t recognise carrying someone out of the car, and Mike is propping her up, and is that _Robin_ clutching her shoulder with blood running between her fingers?

“Robin!” Steve yells behind her, shoving his way past to take her in his arms. “Quick, we need- we need help-”

And then everyone is shouting and they’re carrying her inside and clutter is being swept off the kitchen table to make room to set her down, and for some reason someone’s pressed a needle and a lighter into Nancy’s hands and she does what she’s told, she tries to sterilise it, but her hands are shaking too badly-

And then Joyce is in front of her, holding a hand out. For once she looks steady and sure. “Let me do it,” she says softly. 

Nancy is a firm believer in doing things herself, if they’re to be done right - but not this time. She passes over the needle and the lighter silently, and withdraws to the side of the room to watch with gritted teeth. Suddenly the small room is full. She finds herself standing next to Mike, and grabs him in a hug impulsively: “What the hell happened?” she says. “What are you doing here?” _How did you find your way here?_ the silent question, the one she won’t ask yet because it will freak them all out.

He can’t tear his eyes away from Robin, bleeding on the table. She’s holding the hand of the girl Nancy doesn’t know; Steve’s holding her down as Joyce prepares to extract something that’s probably a bullet. “How the shit did you get shot?” Steve says, almost tearily. 

“You know, it’s this thing, called a gun-” Robin grits out, smiling with her eyes closed. Steve snorts out a pained laugh. And even like this, they’re in sync. On the same wavelength, a wavelength Nancy can’t touch. She stole him away this winter, she realises. She kept him from Robin and she feels a sudden pang of guilt for it.

“Okay, Robin, this is gonna hurt like a bitch, but once we’ve got the bullet out we can stitch you up and you’ll be fine, okay?” Joyce says. Robin nods, and then despite herself Nancy has to look away. She’s not squeamish, not at all. But this-

Robin lets out a ragged scream and now Mike is looking away too. He meets her eyes and almost as if to distract himself, he starts to explain. “We’re here for El, we found out that Brenner’s alive so she’s in danger-”

“Yeah, we know,” she says. He blinks at her. 

“Well, we were in a motel but then government agents were following us- I don’t know what happened, somehow Robin got hurt-”

“Who is that?” she interrupts, gesturing to the girl still holding Robin’s hand as Robin moans in pain.

“That’s Kali. El’s sister. She-” Sudden panic comes into his face. “Where is El?”

That’s really not a question she wants to deal with right now. She looks away, and then she glimpses- is that Lonnie Byers? He’s standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, staring at Joyce with a fixed expression. Either she hasn’t noticed or she’s ignoring him, all her attention focused on Robin. They’ve got the bullet now, Nancy sees. It clatters into a mug her mom grabs from the side and Joyce exhales loudly. 

“We don’t know where El is,” Nancy admits quietly.

“ _What?_ How can you not know- we have to find her-”

“Quiet!” their mom snaps, coming over to them with wide, serious eyes. “It’s too crowded in here, go outside.”

Their _mom._ How the hell is she involved in this? “What do you know about all this?” Nancy hisses at her, and after a tense look their mom takes them both by the arms and steers them out to the hall, where the pool is still sitting stagnant and cold. 

“Mike told me everything,” she says. “Nancy- I’m so sorry, everything you’ve been through, I should have been there for you-”

Nancy shakes her head. This is all too much at once- this is _way_ too much at once. “It doesn’t matter, you weren’t allowed to know.” 

“But still.” Her mom hasn’t moved, but Nancy can tell she wants to reach out. There’s a pleading look in her eyes. “I could have been there for you-”

“I don’t need that, okay?” Irrationally, she feels angry. Furious, even. She shouldn’t but she does. “I haven’t needed that in a long time, mom. I’m sorry.”

Her mom recoils, hurt flashing in her eyes. Mike steps between them. “Let’s just-”

He’s interrupted by a yell from the other room. “-another _fucking_ word, Lonnie, I swear to god-”

The three of them glance at each other and hurry back in. Robin’s got a shirt draped around her shoulders and is nursing a cup of something that’s probably Joyce’s whiskey, Kali and Steve sitting on either side of her and watching the scene before them unfold with tense eyes. The scene in question:

Joyce, with hands still stained with Robin’s blood, looking murderous as she glares up at her ex-husband, whose face is a mask of desperate fury. “I need to know why!” he hisses. “I need to know what’s going on- what’s happening to me-”

“Happening to you? Nothing’s happening to you, other than what I’m gonna do to you if you touch me again.” She’s breathing hard, that icy calm of ten minutes ago all but vanished. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here but you need to _leave.”_

“Joyce-” And that’s Nancy’s mom stepping forward, holding her hands out placatingly, which is _not_ a good idea because Joyce looks about ready to kill someone and she’s turned the full force of that gaze on Karen now. 

“Why the fuck did you bring him here, Karen?” Joyce says, quietly. “I changed my goddamn name. I didn’t want to be found.”

There’s a weird look on Nancy’s mom’s face. Some trembling fragment of- loss? Regret? Nancy doesn’t understand it at all. “Just listen to him, okay? He went to your old house and he saw something. And when I went there-” Her mom takes a deep breath. “I saw something too.”

The atmosphere in the room has sharpened. Everyone is listening intently. Nancy steps forward too: “What did you see?” Because there’s a horrible suspicion building in her gut.

“It was…” Her mom’s voice is almost rapturous. “Like a different world.”

She and Steve glance at each other, a glance full of meaning. Joyce has gone very still. “It’s in Hawkins too,” she whispers, almost to herself. 

“But what about El?” Mike bursts out, shoving his way to the front. Max stands up too. “We have to find her- and Will-”

“And Jonathan,” Steve adds quietly. Nancy shoots him a look and he looks back at her, just worried, nothing else. She’s gotta start trusting that people mean what they say. 

Maybe they really did drive off somewhere. Maybe the pool wasn’t working, maybe they had to try something else. The thought sparks up hope in her chest, but she has to press it down for now. They don’t know anything for sure. And even if it wasn’t Brenner-

He’ll want El anyway. That’s how this works, isn’t it? He’ll be looking for them right now. And the fact that they had a tail- and that tail _shot_ Robin-

“Were you followed?” Nancy demands suddenly. “After the motel, were you followed?”

It’s Kali that shakes her head, standing from her position beside Robin and moving to the center of the room. “I hid us, as we left.” Her eyes shift to Joyce. “When we entered the town- there was something, some kind of boundary- I was able to peel it away, but others would not. Whatever is causing this-” Joyce swallows visibly “-it will protect us from Brenner and his men.”

Joyce has gone pale. Slowly, she shakes her head, and Nancy thinks of Owens. Thinks of his _little errand._ Brenner and his men-

Maybe they’re already here.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Hopper drives the car until he can’t anymore, until it’s out of fuel entirely. Then he ditches it in a snowdrift and starts to walk, because he’s glimpsed the coast between soaring icy hills and where there’s the coast there are boats, and where there are boats there’s the trembling hope of a ticket to freedom, to home…

It’s cold, though. It’s fucking cold. He walks for hours, watches the sun come up above him as he trudges down the frozen slope, the orange-glinting sea his only distraction, his only solace. He thinks about El, thinks about Joyce, walks a little faster. But his stomach is gnawing at him in hunger and while he’s not lacking in water - there’s frozen water all around - fatigue and exposure will get him soon, he knows this. He needs to find civilization. 

If they haven’t already put out a warrant. (Do they have warrants in the USSR? The Soviet equivalent, at least.) 

But hopefully they won’t have had time.

He thinks about the black shadow of the demogorgon, the men screaming in a foreign tongue, gunshots fucking everywhere. Yeah, they won’t have had time.

He regrets leaving it loose. If he could have killed it, he would have. But he doesn’t have a superpowered teenager with him out here in the snow. Against the demogorgon, the ordinary man is useless. He’s made his peace with that.

As he walks, he begins to lose himself in memories. There’s no real harm in it, not really. The icy snow is displaced by the tropical jungle of Vietnam, for some reason - he hasn’t thought of it in years - and Cao, the South Vietnamese soldier whose leg was blown off by a VC landmine, dragged between him and Anderson on their way back to camp with him, a long, long road… 

When he shot Anderson he wasn’t thinking. No, scratch that, he was thinking. He was thinking about how if he didn’t shoot Anderson, Anderson would shoot him, him _and_ Cao, because that kind of thing flies in the wartorn jungle. Because he wasn’t going to back down about this. They weren’t leaving Cao to his death, because he was saveable. Hopper was going to save him. And then Anderson would kill them both and then he’d never make it home to Hawkins to see if Joyce had meant it when she kissed him like that the night of prom.

So he shot Anderson, and he faced no consequences. A patrol picked him and Cao up only a few miles down the line, and good thing too. A kindly intervention by the often cruel hand of fate. Making up for the shitty cards it dealt him later, maybe. Though it wasn’t all that kind. Cao died of sepsis three weeks later.

Another long trek. Different circumstances, different surroundings - but the same weary plodding on. Alone this time. It’s himself he’s saving, not Cao. But he’s going home to Joyce once again. Maybe this time he’ll find her waiting for him.

It occurs to him that he’s delirious just as the shore rises up in front of him, snowy and shingled and beautiful, the beach looming out of nowhere all at once. He nearly breaks down and cries. All he has to do is follow the coastline until he finds a port of some description. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?

His hands and feet feel like blocks of ice. The one advantage of Vietnam was that frostbite was never an issue; now he’s beginning to get worried. 

He looks over the water, lit up in flames by the sun rising above it. He’s on the right coast, at least. Looking east. Maybe he can stow away on a ship heading to LA, or San Francisco - though he knows passage from the USSR to the USA isn’t likely to be easy. Maybe once there he can hitchhike his way east, back to Hawkins, like in that Kerouac novel Joyce liked in high school. Maybe he’ll find Joyce and El as he left them.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Without thinking, he lets his legs give way beneath him so he’s kneeling in the frigid shingle. God, he’s tired. He’s so tired. All the victory of his escape from the prison has drained away, leaving him cold and empty. He knows from his training, from his experience of homeless men who died of exposure in New York’s Arctic winters, that he has to stand up and keep going. If he doesn’t stand up then he’ll die here, far away from Joyce and El, far away from saying sorry - sorry for leaving, sorry for being such an ass. He was a fool. He thought he was losing control back then, when he still had both of them, when he was Chief of Police in a homey little town at the gates of the Midwest and he didn’t know what it feels like to drown in your own lungs. Now he sits on a Russian shore, gently freezing to death, and he has no control at all.

He’s beginning to drift off into pleasanter thoughts, images of El’s grin when she gets a particularly long word right, or Joyce’s eyes as she waits for him to pass her his cigarette, when he begins to hallucinate.

At least, he thinks it’s a hallucination. It’s gotta be, right? 

He stares at the water but the images don’t go away. And then the images are wading to the shore and one of them is touching his arm and they’re both crying and one of them says “Dad,” and that’s enough to make him look up into El’s eyes and maybe realise that she’s actually here.

“El,” he whispers. She smiles through tears and nods. 

And then Will - Will’s here too? - grabs his hand and it’s like the world _tilts_ , and then suddenly they’re all underwater. They’re underwater and it’s such a sudden cold rush that it jolts him out of a stupor, forces him to kick and strive until his head breaks the surface and he gasps in bitter, beautiful fresh air. The sky is brighter than before, rose pink shot through with blood red. He breathes it in - gets a mouthful of water, but he doesn’t taste salt. Which means-

He’s not in Russia anymore.

Beside him El is floundering in the water - of course. He’s not sure she’s ever been taught how to swim. He grabs her by the arm and drags her to shore as the freezing water sucks at them, at their heavy clothes. Will keeps pace- 

And then he touches rock. He dares to put his feet down, and finds that he can stand up. The next dark wave dips and he glimpses a spur of cold, slick stone looming above them - and above that, the skeletal white frame of a lighthouse. With an effort he drags himself up onto land, pulling El with him, and Will follows. They slump there for a moment, the freezing water washing at their feet, before there’s a voice from above:

“C’mon!” And then Jonathan’s face appears, offering a hand, helping them all up. They stand beside the lighthouse, breathing hard, soaking wet and shivering, as Hopper takes in the view.

On one side, a gaping expanse of water. And on the other-

A town. An American town. He recognises the chintzy red sign promoting a diner from afar - not because he’s seen that diner before, but because it’s the same sign that promotes every diner west of New York. This isn’t Hawkins, but-

It’s home nonetheless.

El is crying hard now, clutching at his wet coat, shaking with what’s probably a combination of sobs and shivering. He holds her close and sheds more than a couple tears too. Because he doesn’t know how they did it- maybe he’s hallucinating after all-

But somehow they got him back.

Above them, the blood red sun continues to rise.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits: [it was a very good year by frank sinatra](https://open.spotify.com/track/2ID3rNM3hFBjqrLcV0Wr0y?si=FRuBOJftT3WfOd4P9K-Vyg)
> 
> another week, another chapter. things are really heating up now. as always, let me know your thoughts <3


	6. The Singularity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reunited at last, the group soon splinters. Will realises that his newfound powers don’t come without a cost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for minor character death, period-typical homophobia, gore + violence, and implied/referenced child abuse

“At this hour what is dead is restless,  
and what is living is burning.”  
– Li-Young Lee, “The Hour and What Is Dead”, _The City In Which I Love You_ (1990)

“How do you measure time in total darkness?”  
– Stephen King, _Firestarter_ (1980)

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Tuesday, January 21st, 1986**  
**Somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota**

Joyce is by the phone, dialling the number Owens gave her with shaking fingers, half hoping that he picks up and half hoping that he doesn’t, when there’s the sound of an engine in the driveway and she drops the phone and runs to the window. Nancy, Steve, Mike, and Max run after her but she leaves them behind as she rushes to open the door - because it’s Jonathan’s car.

“Mom,” he says, cutting the engine and climbing out towards her. Will and El are next and with every look the awful tension in her spine begins to ease. But then- there’s someone else getting out of the car. Someone tall, someone horribly familiar. El is clinging to his side and he’s stroking her hair and-

And then he turns to meet her eyes, and it’s like all the years between them melt away. She’s eighteen again and he’s watching her run away from him under the moonlight in prom’s stupid parking lot, run away like she always did, like she did in 1985-

“Hopper,” she breathes. This isn’t real.

He steps forward. This is real.

She stares at him for a long, stricken moment. He looks different, that’s true. Face sharper, thinner. Hair buzzed to the scalp, stubble instead of a beard. He’s lost all of the bulk that he gained that last summer but he’s still tall, still broad and strong-looking. Toughened, almost. And his eyes are the same. That’s also true.

She stares at him and his image swims before her until she realises she’s crying, and she has to bite down a sob. Because it’s him. It’s really him. It’s not some illusion, not this time. She can tell. She knows. 

He takes a step towards her but she takes a step back. Her emotions are threatening to overwhelm her and this isn’t how she wants it to be, their reunion. She doesn’t want to make him comfort her as she’s a sobbing wreck, not this time. He’s probably been through so much in the last six months, too much for her to collapse into him like she’s the mess, like she’s allowed to fall to pieces when she’s done nothing but wait tables all this time-

She walks away. He doesn’t follow. She enters her house and turns the corner and then her knees feel weak and she drops into a chair. Robin’s blood is still on her hands. It’s turned brown now, dry and tight on her skin. She hates it. The first-aid kit is still on the table and after measuring how shallow her breathing is she grabs the oxygen mask and presses it to her face and tries not to lose her mind. She doesn’t know where Lonnie’s gone, and she’s glad of that. This is how he’s always seen her - fragile. A mess. She can’t freak out now. She can’t. Not after sewing stitches in Robin’s ragged shoulder without so much as a misplaced breath-

The thing is, she missed him. _God_ , she missed him. And that fact was always present in her mind right up until Owens told her _we think he’s alive_ and then she stopped thinking about Hopper as Hopper, because it was the only way she could survive. She couldn’t give into the hope because if they were wrong-

But they weren’t wrong. And he’s here. And suddenly she doesn’t know how to handle that. Because he was so angry, that last week. So angry and brutish, and it made her hot and bothered but it also made her flinch and she can’t reconcile that with what she wants from him, and what he wants from her. She can’t reconcile that with the man who nodded at her calmly, tearily, and let her kill him to save their children. Except she didn’t kill him, so now they all have to deal with the aftermath. (She did kill someone. Some _thing._ But she can’t think about that now.)

But she _missed_ him _._ He made her feel safe, that wasn’t a lie. And god, she wants to feel safe. She knows it isn’t that easy, but-

She gasps in oxygen and lets the tightness in her chest ease. She’s okay. It’s okay. They’ll be okay- as long as she doesn’t cry, or maybe jump him like she kind of wants to-

Slowly, she lowers the mask and lets the tension in her shoulders drop. He hasn’t come after her, which she’s glad of. Maybe he’s just as nervous about this as she is.

( _Enzo’s, Friday, picking you up._ Does that still hold? Have they crossed that threshold for once and for all, or do they have to relearn each other? Discover whether the pieces still fit? The prospect makes her exhausted, but it’s a softer prospect than anything else. And maybe they’ll have time. Maybe. Hopefully. If _it_ doesn’t get them first.)

She puts the mask back in the kit and stands up, dusts herself off. Goes back around the corner to the hall and hesitates only for a moment, a millisecond, indiscernible. Then she marches forward and throws her arms around him in a hug so tight he gasps. “I missed you,” she whispers into his shirt.

“I missed you too.” She feels him press a kiss to her head and she just _melts_. She has to be strong and nothing’s gonna get in the way of that but sometimes it’s nice- it’s nice to be taken care of. To feel safe. He’s always made her feel safe.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Owens has been sat in front of the man who’s his de facto boss for less than five minutes before he’s effectively told to pack his desk up in a sad cardboard box and hop on the next train to unemployment.

He squeezes the stress ball that he carries with him everywhere - he has to, these days - and raises an eyebrow. _Don’t look too rattled, Sam_ , he tells himself. It doesn’t do to show weakness, not in here. Not in front of the shadowy man whose real name he doesn’t know; he goes by Agent Leroy, which is unassuming enough, but Owens is no fool. Anyone who travels under the prefix ‘Agent’ doesn’t add to it their real last name.

“I’m not sure I quite understand,” Owens says. “What exactly are you asking me to do?”

Agent Leroy looks at him frankly. ( _Frankly._ Inwardly, Owens laughs bitterly. There’s nothing _frank_ about any of this.) “Sam, I’m not asking you to do anything. You know I couldn’t even if I wanted to - I’m not your boss, remember? We’re the same pay grade, just trying to sort out all this shit before the higher-ups get on our asses, right?”

Huh. So it’s good cop today.

“That being said,” Leroy says, and rounds his desk, “the higher-ups are kinda calling for your ass. Which is why…”

“They’re giving Project Pandora to you.” Owens’ mouth is dry.

“Not exactly. You know what it’s like with the administration.” As if to demonstrate, Leroy waves a hand in the air, up and down, up and down. Like a seesaw. Owens resists the urge to roll his eyes. “One day you’re in favor, and the next…” 

“I’m out on my ass.” 

Leroy smiles mysteriously. “Again, not exactly.” He sits down in the chair beside Owens; somehow it’s more intimidating than if there was a desk between them. Leroy isn’t a scary man, not really. Six foot and not an inch taller, graying hair, reading glasses that he hangs on a slender chain around his neck. Physically he’s not intimidating at all. Nor is he the devil incarnate mentally - but it’s what he represents. The full arm of the administration. They’ve always trusted him more than they trust Owens. (For good reason.)

“So what, then. You’re gonna have to give me some clue here, Leroy. I’m flying blind.”

He grits his teeth as Leroy takes out a packet of cigarettes, sticks one between his teeth, lights it, and offers him the pack. He shakes his head. Leroy shrugs and takes a drag before he responds. “Do you know why they called it Project Pandora?”

Owens shakes his head. He knows the story of Pandora, of course, but he’s never enjoyed the state’s obsession with applying mythology to the titles of its operations. 

“Of course, you know the myth of Pandora. The box that she just couldn’t resist opening… just to take a peek… and out flew all the troubles of the world. Misery, greed, hatred… everything that plagues us. But in the bottom of the box...”

“Hope,” Owens supplies. “She let us have hope, too.”

Leroy smiles. “It’s a metaphor, you see. That thin membrane we call reality, protecting us from the Nether? That’s the box. And out flew all manner of awful things… but good things too. Our hope. The number program. Now, if we could only close the box…”

Owens stares at him. The very point of the tale of Pandora’s Box is that it can never be closed, once it is open; the miseries it released can never be undone. It’s suddenly very clear to him that Project Pandora was a Catch-22 all along, because it was about containing that which can never be contained. The Nether’s spread was inevitable. Owens was the unlucky bastard who got saddled with it, and now he’s paying the price.

“So I guess Project Pandora’s over, then,” he says, clearing his throat. “After all, we failed to _contain_ it pretty spectacularly, what with the Russian involvement. So I’m being removed for failure, is that it?”

Leroy hums something that isn’t exactly agreement. “Pandora was never about containing the negatives, not really. Sure, it was expedient at the time to try. The devastation at Hawkins National Laboratory in 1984 was… regrettable.” The scar on Owens’ leg twinges. “In answer to your question - no. Pandora’s not done. But we’re after a more… _Dante-_ esque approach now.”

His stomach sinks to his toes. Project Dante was Dr. Brenner’s baby, the lovechild of MK Ultra and his own personal brand of sadism. Which means that-

“We’ve brought Dr. Brenner back on board.”

It takes him a moment to find his voice. “He defected to the Ruskies, and now you want to-”

Leroy shrugs. “Not up to me, Sam. I told you, one minute you’re out of favor, the next…”

“So they’re giving Pandora back to Brenner. Jesus.” _Jesus._ Project Pandora was created in the first place to undo the colossal damage Brenner did with Project Dante, all the shit he let in. But apparently not, if Leroy’s to be believed. 

He was never on board with capturing the demogorgon. (It doesn’t have a latin name yet, and he finds he rather likes the word.) For god’s sakes, he’s quite literally come too close to comfort with the younger versions of the things to want to go anywhere _near_ it. But, once again, it was what the higher-ups wanted. There’s only so much circumventing Owens can do. He was relieved to give it up as a lost cause; he was less relieved to leave the Chief somewhere lost in Russia, with the demogorgon still alive and the Reds still with the knowledge of gates, and monsters, and girls with numbers tattooed on their arms.

Because that’s what Brenner gave them, right? All the information they wanted. It’s his fault that July 4th was such a catastrophe. It’s his fault that the Russians have a demogorgon running loose - and now he’s back in charge?

“What remains is the handover,” Leroy says, still smiling, still casual. “A few little loose ends to wrap up.”

Owens thinks of Eleven, hidden away somewhere up north with family Byers. He thinks of the Chief, god-knows-where in Russia, and the demogorgon. And Bauman, waiting outside in his van. “Okay, what?”

“Subject 011. How’s the search been going?”

He swallows. He knew this was coming - somehow he even manages to sound breezy. “I gotta tell you, Leroy, it’s not been going great. I’m not convinced she didn’t die back in 1983.”

Leroy sighs and rubs his forehead with his thumb, the cigarette still held between his fingers. “Sam, I’d really love to go and tell them why they shouldn’t retire you but you’re not giving me much to work with here. We know she didn’t die back in 1983. Her energy signature is very distinct. HEAO 5 isn’t exactly accurate, though, as you know. We can narrow it down to the county and that’s it. And right up until July 4th, 1985, Roane County was lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Listen. There’s been no word, no strange sightings-”

Leroy bulldozes right on through. “Then the country went dark. It went dark, right up until two days ago. We got a hit in the north of Minnesota. Know anything about that, Sam?”

Owens was wrong. This isn’t a firing; it’s an interrogation. 

“Joyce Byers,” Leroy continues. “Admitted to a psychiatric ward in Minnesota, isn’t that right? I have her file here. She has quite a history. Generalised Anxiety Disorder, suspected PTSD, spent some time in a ward before. You know what else it says in this file?”

Owens wrote it. Of course he knows. At the bottom, in _Additional Notes_. He curses himself for it now, curses himself as Leroy passes the file over:

`Additional Notes:`
    ` EXTREMELY INCALCITRANT. UNTRUSTING OF THE GOVERNMENT & HNL SPECIFICALLY. LIVING CLOSE TO THE POVERTY LINE, YET RESISTANT TO THE USE OF MONEY AS AN INCENTIVE OR PRESSURE POINT. MORE RESPONSIVE TO HONESTY & TRANSPARENCY THAN TO FORCE OR MANIPULATION (TOLD DR. M█████ B██████ TO ‘GO TO HELL’). TRUSTS HER OWN INSTINCTS AND IS INTELLIGENT AND RESOURCEFUL – MUST BE HANDLED CAREFULLY. HAS FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE WITH THE NETHER & ITS ORGANISMS – COULD BE A USEFUL RESOURCE. PROTECTIVE OF HER CHILDREN ABOVE ALL. MAY HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WHEREABOUTS OF SUBJECT 011. ```

` `` `

` `` `

That last sentence. God, does he rue that last sentence.

“‘May have knowledge of the whereabouts of Subject 011,’” Leroy quotes. “You wrote that in 1984. And now Joyce Byers has been hospitalised in Minnesota, just when we’re getting readings for 011’s powers up in Minnesota too. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, do you?”

By some miracle, Owens keeps his voice steady. “You think she’s hiding 011.”

“We more than think it.” There’s a little smile on Leroy’s face; Owens realises suddenly that he hates the guy, hates him more than he’s hated anyone. None of this is personal and he’s always known that but now it _rankles_ , more than before. “Dr. Brenner is sure. He didn’t really enjoy being told to _go to hell_ by a madwoman, you know.” _Madwoman._ Owens’ fist clenches so tight around the stress ball that it begins to tear under his grip. Joyce is a lot of things, but he’s beginning to believe that she’s never been _mad._

“Leroy- look. The reason she’s in that psych ward-”

Leroy arches an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Her son thinks it’s something else. Something- something to do with the Nether.” Owens lowers his gaze as he tries to impress the importance of this on him. He has to make him understand. Because Owens doesn’t really believe it himself yet - but if there’s even the slightest possibility that it’s real, then he has to warn them. That’s his job. He’s always been good at his job, no matter what they say. “I think something’s going on again. You said there was only a resurgence of 011’s powers two days ago? _That’s_ what I call a hell of a coincidence.”

Leroy regards him patronisingly. “Do you want me to read you the rest of her medical history? I can, if you want. ‘Diagnosed with panic disorder in 1965,’ ‘history of mental illness in the family,’ ‘Aunt, Darlene Finkel, diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1957.’” He stops and looks at Owens. “I fail to see how it can be anything else.”

Neither could Owens, not at first. But then Jonathan turned up and reminded him; reminded him of how Owens branded young Will with PTSD (which, let’s be honest, he probably does have) instead of ‘demonic Nether possession’, and in turn nearly cost all their lives. He has instincts and he has training, years and years of it. PhDs coming out of his ears. But none of that prepared him for this, for blind leaps of faith on the word of a seventeen year old and his mom whose mental history is a page long. 

“I just- be careful. I’ve underestimated the Nether more than once, and look what happened. Don’t make the same mistake.”

Leroy quirks an eyebrow and stubs his cigarette out. “We won’t.”

The interview is over; Owens leaves as fast as his legs will carry him. He reaches the van and starts driving. It’s only when he’s twenty minutes away from the compound that Bauman crawls out of the back and into the passenger seat. “Well?” he asks, somehow impatient.

“He already knew the answers to the questions he was asking,” Owens answers, wearily. “He knows that Eleven is in Minnesota. He knows about what happened to Joyce.”

“What _did_ happen to Joyce?” Bauman responds snidely. “We don’t know. Neither can he. I sincerely doubt that she’s lost her mind.”

“Damnit, Bauman, you just like her,” he says, unable to resist.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bauman raise an eyebrow. “So do you.”

Owens sighs. He- well. He’s got him there. “Honestly- I didn’t believe it. But maybe I’m starting to believe it. Maybe Jonathan’s right. Maybe there is something else going on.”

“All the more reason to blow the metaphorical whistle.” Bauman is smirking. “Did you get it all?”

Owens slides the recorder out of his jacket pocket. Doing what Jonathan and the Wheeler girl did to him, using Ilya the Russian defector to take down his own government - oh how the tables have turned. “Yeah, I got it. But Eleven is our priority, all right? Eleven and the Byers.”

“Two birds with one stone,” Bauman says. “It’ll be easy.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When there’s a rapid, purposeful knock on the door, Lucas grabs his wrist rocket and holds it slack, ready to aim, because he doesn’t know who it is. But then Dustin goes to answer it and returns with Mr. Clarke, who looks tired and bewildered, holding a bag that’s presumably full of fresh Cerebro parts. When he offers them up, however, Dustin shakes his head and gets him to sit on the beanbag in the corner of the room.

“Mr. Clarke,” he says shakily. “What do you know about singularities?”

This leads to Lucas explaining everything, which quite frankly isn’t much. It’s going to the cave on the reasoning that something, _something_ is going on, and then losing his memory for at least twenty-four hours, leaving him sat here with his middle school science teacher, his eleven-year-old sister, and Dustin. It’s weird, to put it mildly. And Mr. Clarke knows weird - but not their particular brand of weird.

Mr. Clarke is silent for a long time after that. He sits on the beanbag with his fingers steepled under his chin, face intent and focused. They don’t dare interrupt. But finally he straightens up and looks at them all, scientific curiosity in his face. “Okay, I have two possible explanations. Possible, mind you,” he adds, raising the pointer fingers of each hand.

The three of them nod.

“Okay. So the first one - simple memory loss.”

Lucas raises his eyebrows. Memory loss. He’s been through enough by now that simple memory loss sounds faintly ridiculous to him. That really would be a coincidence. And coincidences - they don’t happen. Not here. Not in Hawkins.

“You walked into that cave, you hit your head. Or maybe you were tired, you sat down and drifted off.”

Lucas shakes his head in disbelief. When he looks at Dustin and Erica, they seem equally sceptical. “I don’t think that’s it, Mr. Clarke,” he says.

Mr. Clarke is undeterred. “Okay. So, onto the second explanation.”

The three of them lean forward, tense, waiting. Excited, even. The whole thing is scary but there’s always some element of satisfaction in the reveal, like in _Scooby-Doo_ when they unmask the villain. 

“A singularity, Dustin, like you said. Lucas - you said you didn’t experience the last nearly twenty-four hours. The explanation other than amnesia would be- a place outside of time.”

All three of them frown. “What does that mean?” Erica asks.

“It means, Erica- well. Think of timezones. Take Will for an example. He moved to Minnesota, right?” They all nod. “And Minnesota is an hour behind us. So if you were able to travel there in an instant…”

“You’d have travelled back in time,” Dustin supplies. “Holy _shit._ ”

Mr. Clarke doesn’t even blink. Clearly he’s used to it by now. “Yes, Dustin. But what I’m suggesting is more than that - I’m suggesting a place where time simply levels out. Stops existing. Because time is just another dimension, like any other, you see. We’re so used to a linear sequence that it’s difficult to understand, but it’s possible. It happens in space. If it were somehow possible to enter a black hole - well. What you’d see-”

“What would you see?” Lucas presses, leaning forward. 

“The whole of time laid out before you,” Mr. Clarke says, almost reverently. “You’d know when the universe ended, if you looked back outwards. Black holes - or singularities - exist outside of time. That’s what I’m suggesting, anyway. It couldn’t possibly apply here.”

For some reason Erica is nodding. 

Mr. Clarke continues. “It’s not a black hole. A black hole would-”

“Disrupt gravity, I know,” Erica finishes. Lucas stares at her; she stares back. Her gaze is quietly confident. God, and she calls him a nerd?

“More like tear the planet to pieces,” Mr. Clarke says, raising his eyebrows. “It’s a neat theory, but it doesn’t-”

“I’m not saying it’s a black hole. But what if it’s _like_ that? What if it’s some other kind of- of singularity? And instead of disrupting gravity, it disrupts reality.” Dustin’s voice is full of enthusiasm, excitement. He does love a theory. 

“Mr. Reed,” Lucas says slowly. Dustin and Erica frown but Mr. Clarke’s eyes have gone wide. “They found him out on Mirkwood, ranting and raving about something - what if he saw something? Some ‘disrupted reality’?”

“Mrs. Wheeler,” Dustin says. It’s Lucas’ turn to frown. “She said that she saw something weird out at Will’s old house.”

“Okay, so that gives us a sense of perimeter.” Lucas grabs one of the mapbooks lying on the table and draws a circle in red marker encompassing the Byers’ and the woods between. At the epicenter he marks an X: this is where the cave is. Like-

“The eye of the storm,” Mr. Clarke marvels. “Lucas, you didn’t experience any- well, distortion of reality. You just lost time, right?”

“Right.”

“At the eye of a storm, like a hurricane or tornado, there’s perfect calm. No wind, nothing. All the effects you would experience outside it…”

“So - it originates from the cave?”

“Black hole. Told you.” Dustin is smug. 

“We should test it,” Erica says. “We gotta go back out there.”

“Uh, no way. _We_ are not doing anything. You have school,” Lucas says.

“So do you,” she retorts, swinging around to glare at him. “I’m coming with you. If you think I’m gonna just sit here- after you roped me in last time-”

“Hey, if it had been up to me you’d never have gotten involved-” Lucas starts, as Dustin says, “We had no choice!” and Mr. Clarke coughs and says, “Last time?” and they all fall silent. Right. Mr. Clarke doesn’t know about last time, nor the two times before that. And Lucas would rather like to keep it that way.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Okay, well, if we’re going to the cave-”

“Hang on, Lucas. Is this safe? I can’t possibly let you put yourself at risk without even telling your parents, even in the interest of science-”

“We’ll say we kidnapped you, m’lord,” Dustin says. “We held you at gunpoint and _made_ you enter the dimensional singularity with us.”

“Dustin-”

“You don’t have to come,” Lucas says. “You and Erica can stay here and-”

“Hell no!” Erica snaps. 

Mr. Clarke looks between them uncertainly. He’s curious, Lucas can tell. Infinitely curious. He wants to open this curiosity door, but he might not like what he finds inside. Lucas can’t help him with that. Lucas is _solving_ this, Mr. Clarke or no Mr. Clarke, because nothing messes with his mind and gets away with it. Nothing.

Finally - curiosity wins. “Okay. I’m on board.”

And off they go.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“So Will has powers now?”

“And they’re connected to El somehow?”

“And that’s how you found me.” Hopper is sitting on the couch, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees. El is curled into his side, unwilling to be parted from him for even a second. She’s half afraid that he isn’t real, that this is a dream. That she’ll wake up screaming in her bed and it will be Joyce whose eyes she sees, not Hopper. Not that she’s not grateful for Joyce. Not that without her, these months would have been bearable - because they wouldn’t have been. Not at all.

Will nods. He’s on the floor next to the sofa, Max next to him. Mike is beside El, holding her hand. Joyce is perched on the arm of the sofa next to Hopper, picking at her nails as she listens, and deliberately not looking at Mr. Byers, who’s leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Mrs. Wheeler is standing too, eyes wide. Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan are on the floor near her feet. Robin is in the armchair opposite, with Kali sitting on the arm - and how good it is to see her. How comforting. Because even though El ran away, left her, chose Hopper and the party over her, she’s still her _sister._ Bonded deeper than blood.

“And there’s a… _thing_ messing with this town. With us.” Max’s voice trembles a little as she says it. El missed her so much.

“Yes,” Joyce says quietly.

Hopper looks at her. “What does it want?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, exactly. All I know is that- it’s _hungry._ It sees everything-”

“Like an eye?” Will asks. El looks at him as Joyce nods slowly. “I saw- the day I first used my powers, I saw this- well, like a vision. I saw a massive eye. And other things too, like the lighthouse here in the harbor, and people dancing… I realised that was part of your memories last night.” He’s looking at Joyce and Hopper both. El thinks back to everything they saw, to the way the pieces still refuse to fit together. She wants to ask them about it. But now’s not the time.

Hopper clears his throat. He shares a glance with Joyce that El can’t read. “What else did you see?”

“Well, there was that- your prom? I think?” Will is frowning. “And then-”

“A field,” El says quietly. “Your mother.” She feels Hopper tense beside her. “And Viet-Vietnam.”

He’s passing a hand over his face, some deep pain in his eyes. “Shit, kid, you’re not meant to see that kind of thing-”

“Wait, so you can go into people’s _memories_ now?” Mike’s eyes are wide. 

“I don’t think it’s a memory,” Joyce says softly. 

El nods. “We were _there._ No one could see us, but we were _there._ ”

“And the details-”

“So, what. It’s time travel? Is that what we’re saying?” Steve’s voice is more than a little hysterical. “Please tell me that’s not what we’re saying.”

Dryly, from her spot in the armchair where she’s bundled in blankets, Robin says, “Good thing we saw _Back to the Future_ , huh, Steve?” and Steve flips her off.

“If it can bring us to different worlds,” Nancy says quietly, “why not different times?” 

There’s a silence.

“But wait,” Will says slowly. “Us finding Hopper- that wasn’t _it._ That was us.”

“So you’re saying-”

“You have the same powers as- as this _thing_?” Max says. 

Will shakes his head. “Not exactly, I mean, I can’t-” He glances at his mom. “I can’t _see_ everything, not the way…” He trails off. 

“Hang on, how do we know what powers _it_ even has?” Jonathan says, getting to his feet. “We don’t know anything about it.”

“We know it’s probably linked to that government facility,” Nancy argues. “We know that the stuff we saw and the demodogs- that was probably a defence mechanism.”

“And we know that it can conjure up different worlds,” Mike says. “Like Mrs. Byers saw.” 

She acknowledges this with a slight dip of her head, though El sees her jaw tighten at the name. Furtively, she glances at Mr. Byers. He looks- not bored, exactly. Just _blank._

“And it’s in Hawkins too,” Max adds. Then a weird look comes into her face. “Mike- what about that cave?”

“Cave?” Hopper asks. “What cave?”

It’s Mike that speaks. “We found this- cave. In the woods, between Steve’s house and Will’s old house. It was never there before. And it was weird, like it- like it was looking at us-”

“Near Will’s old house?” Mike’s mom is frowning. “That’s where I- I saw something. And so did-” She glances back at Mr. Byers, and her throat dips as she swallows.

“A cave,” Will repeats quietly. “I saw a cave in the- in the visions I saw, the day I got my powers.”

Suddenly, Mike gasps. “What if it’s like the Beholder?”

“The what?” Nancy says, as Will starts to nod. 

“An eye, right? It _sees everything._ ” Mike’s voice is loud, animated. El watches him with a faint smile on her face. “What’s the Beholder if not a giant eye?”

“Okay, will someone please explain what the Beholder is?” Hopper says, voice full of weariness.

Surprisingly - or not - it’s Steve that answers. “It’s this monster in DnD. This evil aberration- it’s basically a floating eye-”

“We’re not seriously basing this on DnD, are we?” Max says.

“Why not? It’s helped us before,” Mike retorts. 

“And it makes its lair in caves,” Robin says, sitting up with barely a wince. “Maybe- I don’t know. Maybe you’re onto something.”

“Okay, so let’s say it’s the Beholder. You all said there’s something wrong with this town, right? Well, the Beholder can create an area of antimagic. Usually it’s a cone, but maybe it’s not, right? And instead of antimagic-”

“Distortions in reality,” Will says slowly. “There’s that thing about radius, right? Minor warps in reality around the Beholder’s lair. And a feeling of being watched.”

Steve shivers. “Well, you got that part right. This town is creepy.”

“And the town line,” Nancy says. “It tried to hide it from us. So- what. That’s the Beholder’s perimeter?”

“And we’re right in the middle of it.” Jonathan’s voice is quiet. A chill sweeps through the room. 

“So- what do we do?” 

Some part of El expects Hopper to stand up, start talking with that reassuring authority in his voice, _he’s here now, everything’s going to be alright_ , but that doesn’t happen. He remains sitting there, his hands flexing as he clasps them together. He’s thinner than he was, grayer. What happened to him while he was away? His nose looks different. It’s almost crooked, now, like someone broke it. She huddles closer into his side.

Instead, it’s Joyce that stands up. “It- the worlds it shows us, they’re _what ifs._ Mine- it was if my mom never died.” She looks back at Hopper with a strange expression. Almost… longing? “That happening… it completely changed my life. It’s about- opportunity.”

Nancy has stood up too. “You’re right,” she says slowly. “Missed opportunities. I saw a world where- where Barb wasn’t dead.”

Mike is frowning. “Me and Max- we went to the cave. We were right next to it. If you’re right about a defence mechanism, why wouldn’t the Beholder target us?”

“Because you’re kids,” Jonathan says quietly. There’s a concentrated look on his face. “There’s less opportunity for things to go wrong. Less-”

“For it to feed on,” Joyce finishes. 

“So we’re safe?” Max asks, sceptically. “It can’t get us?”

El feels cold. She doesn’t understand some of what they’re saying, but she understands enough. _Less opportunity for things to go wrong._ Except she was stolen from her mother when she’d only just been born. Her life would have been so completely different - unimaginably different. Another life. Another world. So maybe-

Maybe it can get her too.

And half of her-

Well, maybe she’d like to see what it’s like. The other her, the other world. The world where it’s Terry Ives who’s her mother, not Joyce. She wouldn’t know Joyce- or Hopper, or Mike, or Lucas or Max or Dustin or Will or Jonathan-

But still, she’s curious. A world where Papa never took her. A world where she grew up in a warm home crowded with sunshine and love, instead of marked by cold tiles and the drone of the clippers as they shaved her head again. But as hard as she thinks about it-

It doesn’t materialise. The Beholder doesn’t come for her. Maybe she is safe.

“...take it for granted,” Steve is saying, when she starts listening again. “I mean, these are all just theories, right? We gotta be careful about it. If it wants to- to eat our brains, or whatever-”

“We need to get out of this town.” Hopper’s voice is low, rough. “That’s what we do. Then we work out what to do next when we’re out of here, and safe.”

El thinks about the strange, heavy look in Joyce’s eyes, about herself and Will linking hands being swallowed by the past. Maybe it’s too much to hope that they can leave without bringing it with them. 

“Where are we supposed to go?” Robin says. “In case you all forgot, the government is looking for us. For El.”

She bites her lip so hard she tastes blood. Right. In all this discussion of their newfound powers, of the Beholder, of the town - and everyone arriving, her dad alive, Mike holding her hand - she somehow let herself forget the first thing they told them when they arrived: “Brenner is alive. They’re after El.”

“The perimeter protects us from them,” Kali says, the first she’s spoken all this time. Her voice is cold and sure. 

“So we have to weigh up which is worse,” Jonathan says quietly. “Brenner, or the- the Beholder.”

There’s a long silence. Mike rubs his thumb over the back of El’s hand before taking a deep breath: “I say we take our chances here. We have to protect El.”

“Can’t we just… cross the border? Go up to Canada, or something? Somewhere they can’t get us?” Max says, looking around at each of them.

El swallows. “He won’t stop. Not until he finds me.”

“So…”

“We get in touch with Lucas and Dustin, we find out what’s going on in Hawkins. Then maybe some of us leave town and work out how to stop them from finding El.” The plan, when Nancy says it in her confident tone, sounds practical. 

“We can’t talk to Hawkins, though, not unless they’ve fixed Cerebro.”

“Okay, well, we can…”

El lets their voices fade out. She’s thinking about Hopper, thinner now, silent and terse where before he was loud. She’s thinking about six months spent in Russia, and she’s thinking about how if only she still had her powers she could have got him back. And Joyce’s cheekbones wouldn’t be so sharp from the nights she couldn’t afford food for all four of them, and she wouldn’t look so tired from working doubles to keep the lights on. And they wouldn’t be up here in Minnesota with some _creature_ toying with them, trapping them, hunting them. They’d all be safe.

She digs the nails of her free hand into her palm at the thought, so hard it stings. It was her fault Will got detention, so it was her fault that he saw the _eye_ in the first place. And if that’s what started all this...

When she looks up again, the group has dispersed. Only Mike, Will, and Max remain - and Hopper and Joyce too, but then Hopper ruffles her hair and pulls himself to his feet. “I’m gonna go shower, kid, okay?” he says, and then follows Joyce out of the room. El watches them go, a weird heavy feeling in her gut, before Mike gets her attention.

“Okay,” he says, “well I guess it’s up to us.”

Will blinks. “What is?”

“Nancy talked about the old government building, right? That’s gotta be the Beholder’s lair. No one else is doing anything about it, so we should.”

Max scoffs. “And what do you plan to do when we get there?”

“What if it’s like another gate? Then-”

“I can’t- close it.” The words taste sour on El’s tongue. Mike squeezes her hand.

“That’s okay. We can-”

“El can’t close it,” Will interrupts. “But maybe- maybe I can.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“Okay, uh, here’s a towel, and you can- you can use Jonathan’s shampoo-”

“Joyce,” Hopper says, his voice low. She stops and risks looking up at him, her hand coming up automatically so she can chew on her thumbnail - a nervous habit she’s never quite managed to break. “Slow down.” He looks at her like he’s only just seeing her, with something almost like wonder in his face. “You changed your hair.”

She did. She grew out her bangs, tired of them getting in her eyes; more concerning, there’s a fresh streak of gray in her hair that wasn’t there two days ago. But she manages a laugh. “So did you.”

He smiles faintly. 

Her own smile drops. “I don’t-” She closes her eyes, sighs. Slows down. “I’m sorry. It’s just been- a lot. And I don’t even- I can’t believe I’m even saying that to you. You were in _Russia._ ”

“So were you,” he says, humor in his voice. She doesn’t laugh.

“-and now so much is happening and there’s this _thing_ in my head and I-” She stops. He’s spent the last six months in a gulag; he doesn’t want to hear this. Inadvertently she thinks of _certifiable,_ and _glass houses,_ and the way last year he wouldn’t believe her even though the previous two years he did. And that empty pill bottle still sitting on the edge of the sink in the bathroom; and the way they locked the door on her at Cassville, and it took Nancy and Steve to get her out. The way that the _Beholder_ didn’t want her to leave. “Sorry,” she says, a bitter laugh in her voice. “I think I went a little crazy while you were away.”

His eyes sharpen but he says nothing, only looks at her searchingly. She bites down on her nail and feels it tear, causing her to wince, and still he’s silent. He was never like this. They’re both different now.

Finally-

“I want to know. I want to- to know about everything that happened while I was away. The good, and the bad. I want to know what I missed.” His voice is rough, his eyes glinting with an emotion she knows all too well - it’s practically an old friend. Grief. The pain of missing out on everything you could have had; everything that was stolen from you. That’s what it feeds on, she knows. That gap between what could have been and what is. It’s a gap filled with painful desperation and regret - and that’s what it wants. Craves. It’s not in her head the way the Mind Flayer was in Will’s, she knows this. But still. It’s there, settling into her bones, more like an intuition than anything else. A _feeling._

Her nose is beginning to bleed again. She wipes at it hastily. “I’ll tell you everything,” she says to him. “The good things- El’s first day of school, she’s near top of the class in math, Christmas…”

He’s gone misty-eyed. It’s almost painful to watch. But then he says, “And the bad stuff too, Joyce. I know it can’t have been easy. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

It’s her turn for her eyes to sting; she half turns away. He’s apologising? When it was her fault, when she’s the one who turned the keys that shut him away from them for six months? She pushes down the sob that rises in her throat and shoves the towel at him. “Just go,” she says, trying to keep her voice light. It comes out strangled. 

“Okay,” he says quietly. He steps into the bathroom and she leans in to close the door on him - but his hand lands on the frame and stops her. “Can you-” There’s a foreign emotion on his face. Is it- fear? “Can you leave it open? Just an inch or so. I don’t-” He swallows. “Please.”

She blinks at him. He seems half afraid she’s about to laugh at him, and wouldn’t that be ironic? Hypocritical? _Glass houses_ indeed. She just nods.

She sits down on the floor beside the door, there if he needs her, half afraid to step any further away in case he dissolves into ash. She lights a cigarette and smokes it, then lights a second. She’s thinking about the lingering feeling of unease at the back of her head. About the shriek of the demogorgon she heard in another time with her children behind her, and the way there’s no trace of it, the way Will and El are both fine and unhurt. Maybe she is going crazy. Maybe she has to stop denying that.

“Mom?”

She looks up. It’s Jonathan, hovering a couple yards away from her in the hallway. He looks tense, nervous. He sits down on the floor opposite her, his back against the opposing wall. “Hey,” she says quietly, taking a drag of her second cigarette.

“How are you doing?” he asks. She knows why. She knows she wasn’t making much sense, when he saw her in the hospital. Everything was so jumbled up in her head and it’s not that much better now but at least now she’s able to push it to the back of her mind. It’s a low thrum, rather than a cacophony. 

“I’m okay,” she says. She’s not sure whether she’s lying or not. She wishes he was sitting beside her, so she could take his hand. “You?”

He nods, then smiles thinly. “How was Russia?”

So much has happened since that it feels like an age ago. “Cold,” she settles on, and they smile at each other. “While I was away-”

“The school called about Will’s ‘behavioural problems’,” he offers. “And Mickey fired you.”

It takes her a second to process this; when she has, she shakes her head. “Fuck the school. And fuck Mickey.” 

He snorts out a laugh. She watches him fondly, but then suddenly her insides turn cold. She looks at him and thinks of Joe, Joe who died brutally in Russia because he was given too much responsibility too young. Jonathan shouldn’t be asking her how she’s doing. He shouldn’t have to. 

“I’m sorry I left you here, alone with the kids. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was going.”

He bites his lip and looks away from her, and she only feels worse. “It’s okay,” he says. “You were doing what you had to.”

“That’s not-” She sighs. “That’s not the point, Jonathan. We’ve had to do a lot of things over the last few years but that doesn’t make them _okay._ I want- I want to be better. I want things to be better.” After all, isn’t that why she started the meds in the first place? To be better? To be the mom her kids needed, the one they deserved? Somehow she failed at that too.

She sees him preparing to argue, but he seems to think better of it. Instead he says quietly, “It’s not your fault that we’re here, Mom. You don’t have to blame yourself.”

She knows he meant it to make her feel better. Instead it made her feel worse. Because once again he’s reassuring her, and that he feels like he needs to do that - well, that _is_ her fault. She bites her lip and says nothing, because anything that comes out of her mouth would be a lie, and that’s one thing she can stop doing. She can stop lying to him.

Finally, he says, “Y’know Lonnie’s still here?” and she grits her teeth. “Can we please make him leave?”

She stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray she brought and put on the floor. “I want him to leave too, but he’s- I don’t know, he’s involved in this somehow. I don’t know how yet, but he is.”

His fingers worry at a loose thread on his jeans. Idly she thinks they’ll need mending soon. “I don’t like that he’s here,” he admits. “And him and Hopper… that’s just waiting to blow up.”

She laughs, without much humor. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” 

“It’s not- it’s not gonna be like before, is it?” 

Suddenly he sounds so painfully young. And she knows what he means, knows what he’s afraid of. But she’s adamant - she’s not falling into those old patterns ever again. The ones where Lonnie would leave for weeks and months on end and she’d fold into him every single time, no matter how long it took. She shakes her head, and takes a deep breath. “Just let me work this out, okay? I don’t understand it all yet. But maybe…”

“Okay,” he says, but his face has got that closed-off look that means he’s not going to do as he’s told, because he thinks he knows better. _You act like you’re all alone out there in the world but you’re not_ , except that’s exactly how she’s been treating him, isn’t it? Exactly like that. Like he’s alone, the single father of his siblings, while she got lost in Russia and her own awful nightmares. 

She has to fix that, but she doesn’t know how.

He gets to his feet. “I’ll see what I can do about food,” he says. As he passes her she reaches up a hand and he takes it, just briefly, but it’s enough. And then he heads down the hallway and leaves her contemplating a third cigarette. She shouldn’t, she knows. But her fingers are beginning to shake again and she has to stave it off somehow, so she lights her third anyway. 

She closes her eyes as she takes the first drag, and leans her head back against the wall. But when she opens them again it’s like the whole world has shifted, because it’s not her own hallway she’s looking at - or rather, it is. Her hallway as it was, in Hawkins. Her old house.

Cautiously, she gets to her feet. The house is furnished and decorated as it was before, before she scrubbed at the ingrained dirt so hard her hands bled, before she painted the walls with dollar-store whitewash because it just had to pass the agent’s inspection, not the test of time.

“Mom!” 

That’s Will’s voice. She frowns and rounds the corner - and her eyes widen.

She’s faced with Will and Jonathan standing with huge grins on their faces, Will holding out- is that a cake? Adorned with candles? “Happy birthday, Mom,” he says. He sets the cake on the table and Jonathan takes her by the arm and steers her into a chair. 

“C’mon, make a wish,” he says. They don’t sing; of course they don’t. All three of them have a healthy disdain for the birthday song. And she, privately, has an equal disdain for wish-making, so she just smiles and blows out the candles. 

“Did you run out of candles?” she says, laughing, and Will rolls his eyes.

“We weren’t gonna put-”

Jonathan lightly slaps his shoulder. “Shh, don’t be rude.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not that old.” She smiles at them both. They look so healthy, so happy. Eyes shining. Her gaze falls to the table, where Jonathan’s college application forms are laid out ready to go. Will’s latest drawing is beside it, not anything fantastical this time but something _real_ \- or rather, some _one._ A boy in Will’s class. He’d been shy about it at first - but he’d told Jonathan eventually, and then the two of them had sat down with her and told her too. 

It had been weird, sure, because it’s not exactly common in small-town Hawkins. Chicago, sure. When she was there for the protests in ‘68, free thought was flooding in from all angles. It enlightened her on a lot of scores. So when her son sat her down and told her-

She just hugged him tight and made him promise to be quiet, and discreet, because Hawkins is Hawkins and he’s already marked by his last name: he doesn’t need anything else.

“Open this first,” Jonathan says, placing a small package wrapped in brown paper in front of her. On the top is scrawled _Happy Birthday, -H._ She casts a look at Jonathan - she knows full well who it’s from - but he doesn’t even feign innocence, because there’s nothing but happiness in his face. None of that suspicion which, come to think, she’d have suspected. Because the gift is from Hopper, and when she opens it it’s a new lighter, small and solid and suspiciously silver, fitting perfectly in her hand. And Jonathan doesn’t like Hopper-

At least, not where she’s from.

The thought is like a rush of cold water. She jolts out of something that was almost a dream to find herself still on the floor in the hallway in her new house, her only house now. Will and Jonathan, those happy, healthy smiles on their faces, are gone. And she has to wonder-

What was different that time? What put those smiles on her sons’ faces? Because she knows it was what they’ve started calling the Beholder, she knows it. Another universe. Another opportunity missed.

And there’s another question, too-

Why did it show it to her at all?

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Steve finds Robin sitting on the edge of the porch, staring out at the snow. Her arm is in a makeshift sling, he guesses to protect the freshly-stitched up bullet wound. (Bullet wound! Jesus.) He drops down next to her, huffing at the cold, and resists the urge to light his last cigarette. He figures he needs to save it. Things are sure to get worse than this.

“Y’know, I think you owe me an explanation, Harrington.”

Her voice is strident, wry, but he can hear the insecurity beneath it. The hesitation. “Yeah. I do.” He sighs. “I tried to call you, but you weren’t picking up, and-”

“I’m not talking about when you left town. That’s a symptom of a larger problem. I’m talking about how you basically stopped talking to me like three months ago.”

He swallows. Oh. Right. “Nancy and I-” He winces. He really shouldn’t have started this with Nancy’s name. Still, he has to keep going now he’s started. “We were trying to expose my dad. Three months ago I found this paper in his study- I was snooping, I wasn’t even looking for anything really- it had _US Department of Energy_ written on the top. And I- I knew. I just _knew._ ”

Robin listens in silence. Lets him talk.

“So I told my dad I was gonna quit the job at the video store, that I wanted to-” he wrinkles his nose “- _make something of myself._ Of course, he loved that. Smug asshole. He gave me a job in his company almost immediately. But he still didn’t trust me enough to show me what I knew was the truth, so I had to- well. I had to up the stakes.”

“Nancy,” Robin says, realisation in her voice.

“Yeah. My dad always liked her. Robin, you gotta believe me when I say that I would’ve chosen you, but-”

“I’m not exactly Harrington girlfriend material.” He’s relieved to see that she’s smirking. “Less Molly Ringwald than Ally Sheedy, right?”

“You hated that movie.”

“I’m allowed to reference it, aren’t I?”

“Okay, sure. Fine.” His smile fades. “So I brought Nancy with me to all these events, lunches and shit… It was really boring, actually. And we didn’t find anything. And Nancy… she got impatient. So she took things into her own hands.” He catches Robin’s look. “Listen, she’s not actually a priss. She is _really_ stubborn. I tried to stop her, but… she does what she wants. But she found something, which is why we’re up here.”

“Those title deeds with your name on.”

“Yeah.”

“That sucks, Steve. Really. All of it. I’m sorry your dad turned out to be such an asshole.” Unexpectedly her hand lands on his. He gives her a grateful smile.

“Don’t be. I guess at least we got a head-start on all of this because of it. And-” he swallows. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about any of it. I- was scared. I thought it was dangerous.”

She looks at him for a moment. “Tell that to the bullet hole in my shoulder, dingus. Newsflash, I was always gonna get dragged in anyway.” She sighs. “But I get it. Just- promise me you won’t do that again?”

He takes her hand and squeezes it. “I won’t.”

“Steve?” He turns. Nancy and Jonathan are standing in the doorway, determined looks in their eyes. “We have a plan,” Nancy says. 

He beckons them forward. They hesitate- and oh. Oh. Robin’s here. But after their conversation, he’s not budging. She deserves to know what’s going on just as much as he does, if not more, since she got shot because of it.

Finally, the two of them come closer, and Nancy speaks. “Okay, so we figured we need to know more about it, right? The Beholder, or whatever we’re calling it. And the key to that-”

“Is your dad,” Jonathan finishes for her. 

Steve bites his lip. Huh, it figures. Suddenly he’s less keen to talk to his dad than he’s ever been in his life. But he guesses he has to. He starts to get to his feet.

“Wait, aren’t the phones down?” 

All three of them stare at Robin, who blinks. God, she’s right, isn’t she? They forgot about that. He feels a flush of pride, a _ha_ , because it’s a good thing Robin’s here after all. “Right,” he says. “Wanna bet that’s the Beholder’s fault?”

“We’re not gonna find out anything here,” Nancy says. “We have to leave town.”

“What if we can’t come back?” Even saying it sends a chill down his spine.

She shakes her head. “We found the town once, didn’t we? And Jonathan’s left before. It’ll be fine.”

Jonathan nods. “Let’s do this.”

Steve finds himself frowning. He’s not sure what he expected from Jonathan, but it wasn’t really this. Surely he wants to stay here with his family, with Joyce and Will - and El, now, he guesses. Given the _situation._ But Jonathan’s jaw is in a tight line and his hands are fists by his sides, and Steve reflects that really he doesn’t know what it’s been like, these last six months. Maybe Jonathan’s stayed with his family enough for a lifetime.

Besides, his dad’s here, and if Steve can guess anything it’s that Jonathan does not get on with his dad. 

Welcome to the club.

Steve glances at Robin. She’s got a faint, fond smile on her face. “Go on, dingus. Do your saving-the-world bullshit. Kali will keep me company.”

He raises his eyebrows with a secret sort of smirk. There’s definitely something there. He’s happy for her, really. “I’m sure she will.”

She shoves at him with her uninjured arm. “ _Go_ ,” she says.

“Okay, okay,” he says, standing up. “I’m going.” He turns to Jonathan and Nancy. “Let’s do this.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Cycling to the building Nancy talked about takes about twenty minutes. It’s early afternoon, but the sky is dark with clouds. Mike perches on the back of Will’s bike, Max on El’s, and they ride in silence. Will feels Mike’s warmth behind him and tries not to shudder, because all he can think about - even though there’s a new threat looming, even though he can travel thousands of miles in the blink of an eye - is _It’s not my fault you don’t like girls._

What would Mike say, now he’s kissed a boy? 

Somehow, he doesn’t think it would be anything good. And that’s the most terrifying thing of all. He’s hanging on to his old friendships by a singular, tender thread - one more slip and it will break entirely. And he’ll lose them all, not just Mike. Mike will go and the rest will follow, just like that. Gone.

He hasn’t seen Tony since detention on Friday. It’s now Tuesday. He wonders if Tony is sitting in class, wondering where he is. Why he hasn’t called. (Phones are down-)

Maybe Tony doesn’t care. Maybe he’s relieved, relieved the little _fag_ hasn’t turned up to class again-

He shuts off that train of thought where it lies and focuses on the road ahead of him. It’s a train of thought that won’t lead him anywhere good, because the voice in his head sounds suspiciously like his dad’s voice and he left his dad behind without speaking to him deliberately. That he’s involved in this now- 

He should feel closer to him. He should want to sit down with his dad and tell him everything, and hope maybe, finally, they’ll understand each other. The shadow in the sky and the week in the other world. But he’s older now, and he knows it doesn’t work like that. Knows that his dad - well. It’s been made pretty clear to him.

A few days before they moved, Will came into his mom’s bedroom and sat down next to her and asked in a small voice, “Are you telling dad where we’re going?”

His mom was silent. The dark circles under her eyes were even more pronounced then, her wrist bony and thin as her hand landed on his. “No,” she said finally. “We need a fresh start. Is that okay?”

His first instinct was to say no. This was his _dad_ , they couldn’t just cut him out-

But then again, he thought, they’d seen him once in the last two years. He’s cut them out already. He might even have another family, other kids, kids he likes…

And they have El, now. It was too dangerous for Lonnie to know. And he’d be just another layer of stress on his mom, his mom who was doing so much for them…

He considered saying no out of spite. She was taking him away from Hawkins, after all, from all his friends, the town he’s grown up in. But Hawkins has never been very kind to him. And this was happening whether he liked it or not - so he had to do what he could to make his family’s life a little easier.

He nodded. “Yes. That’s okay.”

And now his dad is _here._ And he doesn’t really feel like being made to feel even more of a freak. His dad won’t take well to the whole Mind Flayer thing, he knows that. Just like he knows he won’t take well to the _kissing a boy_ thing.

Which is why he had to get out of the house.

Sneaking out was easy, so easy he feels bad. He knows his mom didn’t want them going out on their own, but if they’re right about it not affecting kids-

Well, it was the smartest option. He’s still a kid, after all. They all are. And if there’s any chance that that will help, any at all, then they have to take it. They’re all in agreement about that. 

When they reach the hidden crossroads, by the sign that tells them they’re about to leave town, they each climb off their bikes and linger uncertainly by the side of the road. “It’s here, right?” Max says, looking at each of them. “Between the road going west and the road to the town.”

“That’s what they said,” El confirms, looking up at the trees. They’re swaying in the wind, dark and looming against the gloomy sky. Will shivers and draws his coat tighter around himself. 

Mike steps forward, and after a moment Will follows him. He’s acting confident, sure of himself, but Will can tell he’s afraid. He reaches Mike’s side just as they step over what’s apparently some threshold, and the forest opens up into another long road. A long road with darkness at the end, and Will is suddenly eerily certain that this is where they’re meant to be.

After another look between them, they head down the road.

It’s silent, peaceful for a while. But then there’s a fence looming up in front of them, _GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. DANGER. KEEP OUT._ Out of the corner of his eye he sees El flinch and instinctively he reaches for her, just as Mike does the same. Mike gets there first and shoots him a weird look, which Will does his best to ignore. Is he _jealous?_ Will resists the urge to laugh. If only he knew.

They find the gap that Jonathan talked about easily enough, and one by one they duck through it. And then they clear the woods and stand there staring at the building, tall and gray and ruined, like Hawkins Lab only older, smaller, less solid. Will thinks about all the times he went there, and the last time, which he barely remembers at all. The thought sends a trickle of fear down his spine. Because that’s the one thing they haven’t considered, isn’t it? _Him._ The Mind Flayer. They don’t know how He’s involved in this-

Because He has to be. This whole thing happening in Hawkins, Hawkins and here, where they moved, like it’s _following_ them-

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he says. 

But it’s futile. El looks at him gently. “We have to do this,” she says. Mike and Max are nodding, and he’s not exactly gonna wait outside, is he? So he nods too. And then they step inside, through a door that’s all but hanging open. The hallway is a ravaged copy of Hawkins Lab. There’s moss creeping up the walls, which are cracked and decaying, and there are ominous dark marks in places.

Instead of listening to his gut, which is screaming at him, they keep going. 

They keep going until they’re faced with a fork in the road. One hallway going one way, one going the other. He doesn’t know which one they should choose - not until Mike steps towards the one on the right, and Will automatically reaches out and tugs him back. 

“Left,” he whispers. Mike meets his eyes and he looks alarmed, scared, but also maybe a little fascinated. Will doesn’t know how he knows; none of them question it. Instead they go left.

The next time they have a choice, they let Will take the lead. He can feel Max looking at him, wide-eyed and curious, but Mike and El barely blink. He guesses they’re more used to the weirdness than Max is.

And then suddenly they’re facing something different. Something-

It’s a hallway like any other, at first. Crumbling walls, linoleum that’s been ripped up in places to reveal cold, bare concrete. But when they look up to the end of the corridor, which is shrouded in darkness, something changes. Because it’s not just _darkness._ It shifts, deepens suddenly like the camera does in the scary moments in _Jaws._

And Will _knows._

Max has stepped forward and, heart in his throat, he bursts out, “Don’t!” She looks back at him questioningly. He has no answer for her, only a gut feeling. Whatever’s beyond that wall of shadow is _evil._

“What do we-” Mike starts, but then he stops, because there’s been another sound. Will’s heart begins to pound. What if they were wrong about the Beholder not affecting kids? What if-

Footsteps. It’s footsteps. He stares at the darkness, stares at it so hard his eyes strain. Max shuffles nervously beside him. And then- someone cursing. “-swear to god, this is such bullshit! We’ve been walking for hours, so much for the singularity-”

Is that _Dustin?_

Someone begins to emerge from the darkness. “I told you, I didn’t have amnesia-” 

Lucas. For a second he’s still looking behind him into the black, annoyance in his face, and then he turns and spots the four of them and his eyes widen. 

“Holy shit,” he says, as Dustin emerges behind him. Following Dustin is Erica, and is that-

“Mr. Clarke,” Mike breathes. “Okay, what the fuck.”

“I don’t- I don’t understand,” Max says. 

“Okay, what the hell is happening here?” Erica has her hands on her hips. And unless this is some illusion-

“Kids, I’m feeling a little dizzy. I might- I might just sit down.” Mr. Clarke is wavering. Dustin is looking at him with concern but with horrible, sudden clarity Will realises that they were right about it affecting adults, and not kids. The Beholder is coming for Mr. Clarke.

“We need to get him out of here,” he says sharply. 

Mike meets his eyes and nods. “Yeah, let’s go.”

They all but run.

It’s only when they’re outside, breathing in air so cold it hurts, bending over to catch their breath, that they stop and start to assess exactly what the _fuck_ is going on. Lucas straightens up first, and his eyes are wide. “Does anyone wanna explain how the hell we’re here? And where is _here_ , anyway?”

“Minnesota,” El says matter-of-factly.

“ _What?”_

“Damn, guess we were right about the singularity,” Erica remarks, leaning against a tree with her arms crossed.

“Speaking of explaining things, how about you explain what the hell you mean by ‘singularity’?” Max has crossed her arms too. 

“Well, basically, there’s this cave in Hawkins-”

“Lucas disappeared for nearly twenty-four hours, it was scary-”

“And I couldn’t remember any of that. So we thought maybe it was to do with time, like a space outside of time-”

“A singularity.” Mr. Clarke’s voice is heavy. It matches Will’s mood. Because _time -_ space and time _._ That makes his heart sink. Because if he and El can transcend time too, then-

“If the Beholder can do that,” Max says slowly, “and so can you-”

Then they have to be connected. And if they’re connected-

It has to be about the Mind Flayer. It _has_ to.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

For the first time in nigh on twenty years, Karen wants a cigarette.

She used to smoke in high school, when she’d slip out of dances to share cigarettes and kisses with the boys from Park. She even had a cigarette holder at one stage, a long ungainly thing that she thought made her look elegant. Ted liked it, anyway. And then she got pregnant with Nancy in 1967 and promptly gave up, and never looked back. Until now, that is. God.

She can’t quite believe it. Any of it. It’s ridiculous. Portals to other dimensions, _things_ that can- that can trick your mind into seeing things that aren’t _real-_

Because it isn’t real. She’s adamant about that. That other world, where she and Joyce-

No. It’s not real. This is the only reality, this one right here. And maybe there are monsters, and girls who can move things with their minds, but that’s as far as it goes. And as for said girl hiding in her basement, not Russian like the government men said but an American child stolen from her mother- 

All of a sudden she feels like taking Ted’s flag out of the box it lives in outside of the week of the 4th of July and burning it. And smoking a cigarette while she does it, because this is stressful and apparently some sort of monster’s more likely to kill her before cancer does.

The thought didn’t even occur to her until Lonnie got up and said brusquely “I’m going for a smoke,” brushing past her without another word and the expectation that he’d be gone for at least half an hour. Karen finds herself a little relieved that he’s disappeared. _Why the fuck did you bring him here, Karen? I changed my goddamn name. I didn’t want to be found._

She hopes it was the right decision, bringing him here. She hopes it doesn’t go wrong.

There’s a sound from outside - muffled voices. She frowns and gets to her feet, moves to the window to glimpse Lonnie and Joyce standing smoking a few yards away. _Shit._ She didn’t realise Joyce was outside. She looks tense, angry, smoking with sharp, quick movements. 

“...how crazy all this is?” Lonnie is saying, voice flat, on the edge of reasonable.

“How _crazy_ it- _of course_ it’s crazy. But you said you saw something yourself, didn’t you? Is it so hard to believe that’s real?”

He says something inaudible and Joyce’s face twists. Despite herself, Karen keeps listening.

“Did you _never_ stop and think about how maybe, if you call someone crazy so many times, they’ll start to _go_ a little crazy? Because they think that’s their only option? Because the whole- the whole world is fucking crazy, and chaotic, and doesn’t make sense, and the only thing- the only thing that _does_ make sense is what they’ve been telling you you are all along? Isn’t that- isn’t that easier? To just- admit it, and use it, because that’s the only way you can survive?”

“But this is just- this is-“

“I don’t need you to believe me, Lonnie. I don’t need whatever- whatever twisted acceptance you think you can give me. I changed my name for a reason. I’m _done_ needing you.” Joyce drops her cigarette; Karen rushes to look like she wasn’t eavesdropping. Bizarrely, she’s full of pride.

She looks around as Joyce comes into the kitchen, looking increasingly pale. That streak in her hair is still stubbornly gray, Karen notices - is that normal? Or is it something else to do with… everything? 

“Are you alright?” she risks asking. Joyce barely looks at her, just folds into the nearest chair and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. Her nose is bleeding again and Karen grabs a wad of tissues and hands them to her before taking the chair beside her. “I saw you outside with Lonnie,” she says. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were outside too. I shouldn’t have let him go out.”

Joyce looks at her with confusion. “Lonnie?”

“Yes, he…” Karen trails off. Joyce looks less like she’s forgotten and more like it’s irrelevant, beneath her concern. “Joyce?”

Her eyes are half-closed; she looks like she’s about to faint. Karen makes an executive decision and stands up, finding bread, butter, and a nearly empty packet of turkey ham that’s probably got less than a day left before it turns. She does what she can with it, makes a sizeable sandwich, and places it on the table before Joyce. 

“Eat,” she says, when Joyce shows no sign of moving. “You have to keep your strength up.”

Joyce blinks at her, but she begins to eat. Color comes back into her cheeks remarkably quickly - and didn’t they say something about hypoglycemia, from when she was in the hospital? She’s changed out of the sweatpants but the bracelet’s still peeking out from under the sleeve of her flannel. Karen looks at it and tries to remember her first aid training.

“Do you have regrets? With Nancy, and Mike, and Holly?” 

She blinks and looks at Joyce. Joyce’s expression is wary, uncertain. Karen thinks for a moment. “No,” she says finally, decisively. “I mean sure, there are things I might change if I had the chance, but _regrets_? No.”

Joyce’s face clouds over. She huffs out a sigh and shakes her head. “Must be nice,” and her voice is bitter.

Karen lays her hand on hers, and suddenly this feels like a day two and a half years ago when Karen just wanted to be _nice_ and Joyce was maybe a little crazy but that was okayand now she knows that Joyce wasn’t crazy at all and they’ve gone beyond _nice-_

“You can’t think like that,” she says. “We all have to keep moving forward. It’s not-”

The phone rings, cutting her off, and Joyce all but jumps out of her skin. Karen frowns - aren’t the phones dead? - but gets up to answer it. She doesn’t recognise the voice: it’s a man, hissing _“Joyce?”_ at a volume that makes her ears hurt. “Who is this?” she says.

“Who is _this?”_ the man snaps. “I’m calling for Joyce.”

“This is Karen, I’m-” she glances back at Joyce, watching her at the phone with narrowed eyes, “-a friend of Joyce’s. I can take a message?”

There’s a silence. “Okay, well it’s probably better she hears it from someone in person anyway. It’s- well. Tell her it’s Murray who called, and say we’re in the area, we’re gonna come visit as soon as we can, but…” 

“But what?” 

“It’s her ex-husband. Lonnie. He- well, he’s dead.”

She freezes. That isn’t- what? She only saw him twenty minutes ago. He went out for a smoke- what the hell happened in that time? “How?” she whispers, bending closer to the phone like Joyce will be able to hear the answer.

“His car was found wrecked on Route 90 leaving Chicago. They only just identified him by his dentals - it was burnt out. Happened yesterday.”

There’s a sudden chill in the air. _He’s dead. Happened yesterday._ That can’t be- that makes no sense-

“What is it?” Joyce whispers, catching her horrified look. “What’s happened now?’

She doesn’t answer. She stares at the phone, bile creeping up her throat. God, what has she gotten herself involved in?

Lonnie died on the road out of Chicago yesterday.

So what’s out smoking in the cold?

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Monday, January 20th, 1986  
Outside Chicago

     _It's good to hear your voice, you know it's been so long_  
_If I don't get your calls, then everything goes wrong_  
_I want to tell you something you've known all along_  
_Don't leave me hanging on the telephone_  
_Don’t leave me hanging-_

Lonnie curls his lip at Debbie Harry’s voice. He’s never liked Blondie. Girly music, that’s what it is. Which is fine if you’re a girl, but those men who like Blondie? Something weird about it, he’s sure. He switches the station, finds Eddie and the Hot Rods. He grins. That’s better. 

He flexes his hand on the wheel. Route 90 isn’t all that busy, so he can see Karen Wheeler’s car only a few cars ahead. Following her is easy, really easy. _I’d like you to leave._ They’ll see about that, stupid bitch.

Minnesota. That’s where she’s driving, it’s obvious. Off to see Joyce. Maybe to warn her about him, which strikes a hot burst of anger in his chest. Why does Ted’s wife think she has the _right_ \- and why the fuck didn’t Joyce tell him she moved? She moved and took his _kids_ with her, which, sure, they’re kind of pain-in-the-asses but she’s got him registered to pay child support and she can’t even tell him where they went?

First he wanted to find her because he was having to sell his car, his prize 1984 Ford Mustang SVO, and he thought it would be only fair to give his kids a spin in it before it went. That, and he was hoping Joyce would have a rainy-day fund which he could pilfer to pay off the rest of the debt, alongside the car. She’s helped him out before. Only a little bit, granted, and with a lot of shouting along the way, but…

He always gets his way with her. Well, except that time a couple years ago when they all thought Will was dead, but apparently he wasn’t after all. The nerve of her, _I have not needed you in a long time!_ Again, he scoffs. They’ll see about that. He didn’t get it - still doesn’t. What was the harm in seizing the opportunity? Making the best out of a bad situation? Will was dead, and that was terrible, so why couldn’t they take something in return?

But apparently not.

Even thinking about it makes him angry again. 

The second reason he wants to find her- well. He’s not convinced she hasn’t done something to that house, to make visitors crazy by proxy. Because what he saw is too strange to believe. Insane. 

Right up Joyce’s alley.

Even thinking about it, now - it brings it all back. He stops seeing the road, the trucks and cars cruising past, and starts seeing that dimly lit bedroom, ZZ Top spinning slowly on the record player at low volume, the ashtray sitting on the middle of rumpled sheets and the woman smoking into it.

He can still glimpse the road, feel the steering wheel under his hands, but it’s distant, little more than an echo. He lets himself indulge, stepping forward into the room. “What took you so long?” the woman drawls, voice soft and smoky.

He hands her the bottle of Jack that he didn’t even realise he was holding. “You wanted a drink, didn’t you?”

She takes a swig straight from the bottle, and her long hair falls away from her face. It’s Joyce. Her hair is as black as it was when he met her when she was in high school, her lips red with smudged lipstick. She’s naked, lounging on the sheets with her cigarette drifting smoke up to the ceiling. He looks her up and down; there’s none of the signs of childbirth on her body, and there’s a freshly blooming hickey on her neck. He grins.

He takes the bottle from her and drinks, lying back down beside her, resting his hand on her thigh. “Y’know I gotta go to my shift at the bar in under an hour, right, Lonnie?’

“Fuck the bar,” he says, gesturing with the bottle. Some of the whiskey sloshes onto the sheets, but she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t nag at him, doesn’t say _I have to go to work, Lonnie, I have to pay our fucking bills because god knows you won’t_ -

She just laughs, and takes back the bottle. “Yeah, maybe I will. They pay like shit anyway. Maybe we should leave Chicago, go someplace else.”

He raises an eyebrow, trails his fingers over her skin. Outside, the sounds of the city in the late afternoon are faint but undeniable. And beyond that there’s the thrum of the Ford’s engine, the ghost of the wheel under his hand. Which reality is real? he wonders absently. He can taste the burn of the liquor on his tongue and maybe he really is crazy.

Maybe Joyce finally drove him mad.

But that’s a different Joyce - because this Joyce smirks at him with lips painted red and lies naked in his bed, drinking whiskey from the bottle and asking him to skip town with her. No obligations, no strings. What he thought it would be like, before he knocked her up. What he wanted.

“East or west?” he replies. She kisses him. 

And he doesn’t feel it when the Ford Mustang goes careening off the road, when it lands on its roof on the road that passes below, when the gas tank ignites and it explodes into flame. He kisses this phantom of Joyce and doesn’t feel it when a phantom of himself peels off down the route, tailing Karen Wheeler, off to find his ex-wife in Minnesota. 

And then he doesn’t feel anything at all.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Robin is absently contemplating the crossword, Kali leaning over her to look at the clues, when there’s a flurry of movement from the kitchen and Karen, Hopper and Joyce come in, looking tense and _scared._ “-the hell didn’t he talk to _me,_ ” Joyce is spitting, furious.

“He just said it would be better if you heard it in person. I mean, it’s a lot for anyone, Joyce, let alone now-”

“But that’s just it, isn’t it? He isn’t dead. He’s- he’s fucking out there, smoking next to my _fucking_ kitchen-”

“What’s going on?” Robin asks tentatively. 

“We got a phone call,” Hopper explains, as Joyce lights a cigarette. 

“I thought the phones were dead.”

“I don’t know, he said- he said they were in the area, so maybe that’s-”

“Does it matter?” Hopper interrupts, pinching the bridge of his nose. “They said that something had happened to Lonnie, but…”

“...but he’s right outside.” Robin frowns. 

Kali has stiffened beside her. “It’s a trick,” she says quietly. 

“What?” 

But before she can explain, the door swings open and Mr. Byers comes in. He looks cold and bored, and now that she’s looking for it Robin can see something almost _dead_ in his eyes. He stops at the scene before them, all four of them staring at him, and frowns. “What the hell’s happening now?”

“Lonnie-” Joyce starts, stepping forward, but Kali has got to her feet and blocks her way. There’s a concentrated look on her face.

“It’s a trick,” she repeats. She waves her hand, and nothing happens. Robin shifts in her chair. But then she does it again, jaw taut, and something happens.

His face _changes._ It’s only for a moment but in that moment his skin melts away, _burns_ away, revealing charred muscle and bone- the hideous jut of a broken cheekbone- what’s left of his face contorted into a brutal, hateful expression-

Just as quick, the image fades and he looks just as human as ever. But they all saw it. Karen’s turned green and Joyce is staring in fixated horror. Hopper’s hand has moved to his side, where Robin guesses he’s used to wearing a gun. Kali’s nose is bleeding.

“What the hell are you?” Joyce whispers, voice full of weariness. 

There’s a long moment of silence. Robin half expects him - it? - to deny it. But then-

    You kn **ow.**

The voice is horrible, grating, like something’s being scraped on her very bones. She winces at it. It comes out of Mr. Byers’ mouth but it’s not a human voice, not at all. Nothing about it is familiar. Joyce has gone white. 

Hopper has ducked slowly out of view, and just as slowly he returns, a long, heavy gun in his hands. He raises it and aims it at Mr. Byers- the _thing_ using Mr. Byers’ face-

Mr. Byers laughs. 

    You can’t **stop** it. It’s alreadybegun. We’re in you **r head.**

A silent tear is tracing down Joyce’s cheek. He steps forward and there’s blood on his face now, dripping from his nose, his eyes. Hopper grabs her by the arm and tugs her back away from him as he moves closer- reaches out-

There’s a gunshot. 

The thing that’s not Mr. Byers falls to the floor, still smiling. Joyce breathes out shakily, clutching at her throat. Hopper nudges the corpse with his foot. And Robin tries to comprehend the fact that he just killed a man - but not a man at all. _Something else._

“What _was_ that?” Karen asks, wide-eyed, still pale and trembling.

“The Beholder,” Kali says, “if that’s what you want to call it. It’s _here._ ”

“If it can- if it can do _that_ -” Robin clears her throat. “Then what else can it do? How can we trust _anything?”_

Silence. They look at each other, faces grave. Finally, it’s Joyce who gives them the answer they’re all thinking anyway: “We can’t.”

And then Robin hears something. Outside, distant, so faint she could almost have imagined it. But no - there it is again. An inhuman screech. It makes her stomach sink. She looks at Joyce and Hopper and her fear only grows, because she finds their eyes round with terror. “Where are the kids,” Joyce manages. 

Karen disappears down the hall for a moment and returns with her hand over her mouth. “Gone.”

“Gone? Gone where? We need to-”

“What was that?” Robin dares to ask.

It’s Hopper who answers, with haunted eyes. “The demogorgon.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“Y’know, there’s something I didn’t mention when we were all talking. It seemed- I don’t know, I thought it was nothing, really. And I didn’t want to bring it up with you, because you were already mad at me about the thing with your dad _anyway_ , and-”

“Nancy,” Steve says, turning to glance at her. Jonathan watches them wearily from the backseat. “Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“When I broke into your dad’s office.” She winces. “Someone chased me through the woods. I mean- I think it’s someone. It could have been some _thing._ ”

“You mean- like a-”

“A demogorgon?” Jonathan asks flatly.

Nancy shakes her head. “I don’t- I don’t know. I don’t think so. It was probably just- just a person- your dad had other people working in the house that night, right?”

Steve shakes his head. “No.”

Her eyes widen. Jonathan studies her profile against the white road ahead. “So…”

“It’s in Hawkins too, isn’t it?” he says. “That’s what Mike and Max said. And that’s the right area, the woods between Steve’s house and my house.”

They don’t comment on his slip. He’s barely aware he made it. “Right,” Steve says. “Okay. So something- something _chased_ you, that’s great, that’s another level of-”

His voice cuts off. He’s staring straight ahead at the road, eyes with a glazed-off sort of look. “Steve?” Nancy tries. He doesn’t respond. The road ahead is straight and clear for the next few hundred yards but then it swerves to the left and Steve isn’t responding-

“Steve!” Jonathan shouts. Nancy shoves at his shoulder but he still doesn’t move, and this is just like in that building, frozen- “Nancy, try and take the wheel-”

She leans over him and makes a grab for it as the turning looms up ahead of them- Jonathan yells as the car doesn’t change course, heading to crash in the woods-

But then Nancy manages to swerve them away from it, to follow the road. The sign for the town line shoots past - and as it does Steve lets out a groan and a bleary, “Nancy?”

“Steve, oh my god, thank god-” 

He stops the car. They sit in horrified silence for a moment as they process that Steve could very well have killed them all. What the fuck was that? What- “What happened?” Jonathan says, when he’s found his voice. 

Steve blinks at him. He’s gone gray. “I need- I need some air,” he says, and stumbles out of the car - and promptly sinks to his knees.

“Steve?” Jonathan says, following him out of the car. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t-” Steve pulls his legs out from under him and leans back against the car. Nancy rounds it to join them, lips pinched together. “I saw something again. Like before, in that building. That other world.”

Jonathan exchanges a glance with Nancy. 

“I couldn’t- I couldn’t pull myself out of it. I- it was so powerful. I could only keep going along with it.”

“Until we crossed the town line,” she says, realisation in her voice. “It’s confined to the town.”

Jonathan stares at her. Surely they can’t be certain of that - but he guesses it’s the only explanation they’ve got. They’re just guessing, guessing with everything. How come it’s still affecting Steve and not Nancy? How come he’s never seen it at all?

“We should keep going,” Nancy says, clearly thinking the same. “We need answers.”

Steve nods. Jonathan extends a hand to help him up; after a moment, he takes it. And then he takes Jonathan’s spot in the back, and Jonathan takes the wheel. They’re not taking any chances. This isn’t happening again.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

They have to walk all the way back to the house, because there’s only two bikes and that’s not enough for eight of them. Dustin walks in between Mike and Lucas as a sort of buffer, because apparently they still hate each other even though all that drama should be _really_ irrelevant right about now, for god’s sake.

Mr. Clarke keeps shooting curious glances at El, like he’s seen her somewhere before, which Dustin guesses he kind of has. But luckily they don’t engage. Because they haven’t told him everything yet, even though they really kind of need to because they’ve travelled hundreds and hundreds of miles without ever leaving that cave and anything weird is always the fault of the Upside Down, always, and how can he help them figure it out if he doesn’t have context?

But Dustin stays quiet, for now. He’ll tell him soon - he’ll have to.

But for now: “Are you two ready to admit how immature you’re being yet?” he says scornfully, looking from Mike to Lucas and back again. “I can’t believe you’re still not talking to each other.”

“We’re not not talking to each other!” Lucas protests, as Mike snaps, “Well, if he won’t apologise, then…”

“Apologise for what?” Lucas says. “For not responding well to you being a little shit?”

“Oh, now that’s mature,” Max says, looking over her shoulder to glare at him, from where she’s walking with El and Will a little way ahead. 

Erica sniggers. “Yeah, that’s mature.”

“Okay, I admit there was something going on. But you achieved exactly nothing by being so secretive and exclusive about it!”

“Exclusive?” Mike splutters. “Just because I’m friends with your ex-girlfriend now-”

Max stops still. “This is about _me?”_ Her cheeks are flushed with fury. Dustin idly remembers the time he had a crush on her and finds himself relieved that he doesn’t have to deal with all this drama. 

“It’s not just about you, it’s about _everything._ If we’d all just sat down and talked to each other - and that includes you, Dustin - we wouldn’t be in this position.”

“That’s rich,” Mike scoffs. “Whose fault is it that we _didn’t_ sit down and talk?”

“Both of yours!” Dustin bursts out, throwing his hands up in the air. “You’ve both been weird and cagey! Just because you wanna forget what happened _the last three times_ -”

“The last three times?” Mr. Clarke is frowning. Dustin swallows. He’d forgotten Mr. Clarke was there. 

“We’ll explain later,” Mike says. “For now-”

“Guys.” El’s voice is so quiet they almost miss it. “ _Guys.”_

“What?” Max turns back to her. She’s standing stock still, staring at the road ahead. It’s a quiet suburban street near the lakeshore; there’s no one around, no one at all. Everything is cast faintly blue by the heavy cloud above them. 

“What is it?” Dustin asks, pushing past Mike and Lucas and going to stand next to El. He’s learnt to trust her instincts, after all. “El?”

Will is looking down the road too, his hand on his neck. Oh, _shit._ Because that’s- that’s what he did every time the Mind Flayer did something last summer, right? And that means-

“Something’s coming,” he says quietly. 

“Something’s coming? What-”

Dustin doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence because then there’s an ungodly noise, inhuman screeching, something skittering on tarmac like a huge dog except-

_Ohgodthat’snotadog-_

As it leaps towards them its face opens up into rows of razor teeth, sweet with the blistering stench of decaying flesh, and they scatter. Will has grabbed his arm as they dive off the road and into some poor person’s backyard, vaulting the thankfully low fence and not stopping until they’re under the cover of the trees, hearts pounding, nerve endings on fucking _fire_ with adrenaline because-

Because-

Since when was there a demogorgon in Minne-fucking-sota?

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit-”

“Dustin!” Will snaps at him - snaps? that’s new - and he falls silent. “Okay, I don’t think it’s coming after us.”

“What about the others?”

They peer nervously through the trees. No one’s in sight. It’s almost like- well, like nothing ever happened. Like maybe it was a figment of their imagination. But then there’s another screech, more distant now, and he has to accept very quickly that it wasn’t. (He knew it wasn’t over. He _knew_ it.) 

He swallows nervously. “Okay, well, El’s with them, right, so they can find their way back to the house. We can meet them there.”

Will looks at him for a moment, a torn expression on his face. “But what if they got separated? Whoever’s not with El wouldn’t know where to go.”

“Then they can ask someone, right? Or when we get back we can send someone out to look. Someone who has a gun.”

Finally, Will nods. “Okay.” 

They walk in fraught, nervous silence for a while, but the sounds of the demogorgon have faded. Wherever it is, it’s not here. And the woods and the streets, when they finally cut back across someone else’s yard, are empty. Eerily so. And Dustin can’t take the silence any longer, so he starts talking. “So, Minnesota? How is it? How are you? Do you have a whole bunch of super-cool friends?”

A weird look comes into his face. “I don’t- I mean, yeah, I have a few. It’s- nice, I guess.” He looks like he’s only just realising this himself. “It’s been… nice. Not much has happened.”

“Not much has happened? C’mon, you moved to a whole new state, started high school, El started school _period_ … stuff’s happened. Surely.”

He shrugs. “I don’t- I mean sure, stuff’s happened. Just… not much. I broke a sophomore’s nose,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. Dustin stares at him with a little bit of awe. “But it’s just been… quiet. Until now.”

“Until now,” Dustin echoes, and they lapse into nervous silence. Then they turn down another driveway, snowy, a little less neat than some of the others back on the wealthier streets, and they’re facing what he guesses is the Byers’ new house. Small, but it looks homey. And _warm_ , too, which is a bonus. There’s a frigid, painful chill in the air.

“Dustin!” 

They turn to see El hurrying up the driveway towards them, followed closely by Erica and Mr. Clarke. Erica frowns: “Where’re Lucas, Max, and Mike?”

His stomach drops. “They’re not with you?”

The three of them shake their heads. So they’re still out there, still- where the demogorgon can get them-

The door opens. Mrs. Byers comes rushing out, face white, and grabs first Will then El in a hug. “Where the hell were you? What happened?” she hisses. Behind her is Mrs. Wheeler, and is that _Hopper?_ And then Mrs. Byers’ gaze moves over the rest of them, stopping on Mr. Clarke. “Scott?” she says, almost incredulously.

Mr. Clarke blinks at her. “Hi, Mrs. Byers. Do you think you might be able to explain what’s going on?”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Will’s been home for all of two minutes before his mom takes him by the elbow and tugs him into his room, shutting the door behind them. There’s something trembling in her eyes. 

“What is it?” he says, fear thick in his throat. This can’t be good. (He can’t take anything else-!)

“Will-” she starts, and then stops. She looks at him mutely for a moment, before sitting down on his bed and reaching for him. He takes her hand and lets her guide him to sit beside her. She doesn’t look at him, just stares at the floor, pinching her lips together.

“Mom? What is it?” _You’re scaring me_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

She takes a deep breath. That streak of gray in her hair makes her look old, he realises suddenly. She’s never looked old before. “It’s your dad.”

Everything inside him sinks. _He’s left again, hasn’t he?_ It didn’t take him long to get bored. Will feels a strange sense of lightness, almost relief, at the idea. That he won’t have to tell his dad any of the weird shit that’s been going on; that he won’t have to suffer the consequences. Maybe this is better. 

“He’s dead.”

Oh.

The first emotion he feels is guilt. _Maybe this is better._ But he didn’t want him to _die._ That wasn’t- that isn’t-

His dad has never been there for him. He’s known this for a while. But now his dad can never be there for him ever again, because he’s gone. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back. And maybe that’s his _fault_ -

“How?” he croaks. 

His mom tightens her grip on his hand. “Oh, baby…”

“How.”

She bites her lip. “ _It_ got him. It- he was never even here. It was an illusion the whole time.” She reaches for him, as if to hug him, but he pulls away and stands up.

“He never wanted me, did he?” he says quietly, finally, after a long silence.

“Sweetie, that’s not-”

“Did he?” He turns away, then paces the length of the room. “He didn’t. And I was in denial about that for a long time. And he would have wanted me even less if he knew what I really am.” A stray tear slides down his cheek. He doesn’t brush it away until it reaches his chin, and then he turns to face his mom. She’s hunched in on herself, looking so small, eyes wide, but when he looks at her she looks back and reaches out her hand again.

He takes it, suddenly afraid. More afraid than before. Because if he’s ever going to do it, he’s going to do it now.

“Mom-”

“Yes, baby?” Her voice is a teary whisper, but it’s loud in the silence of the room. 

“I have something I have to tell you. It’s, um- it’s- I don’t-” She traces circles on his palm and he takes a deep breath - fuck the preamble, just say it - but what comes out isn’t like that- “What he said about me. Dad. That I was a-” He winces. But then he grits his teeth and says it anyway. “A fag. He was right.”

She stills. He can hear the blood rushing in his ears. All of it seems irrelevant right now, the Beholder hanging over them like a fucking guillotine, the murder of his dad, the way nothing in this town is as it seems. All he wants is for his mom to forgive him.

“He wasn’t right, Will,” she says. He stiffens. “I mean- about it being a bad thing. You are- what you are, but that’s not a bad thing. Not ever, you hear me? I don’t-” She lets out something like a teary laugh. “Who am I to judge?”

He does cry then. She pulls him into her arms and holds him there and he cries into her flannel like he’s four years old again and Lonnie has shouted too loud or broken another bottle against the wall, and she strokes his hair and whispers soothing words.

Finally, his voice muffled in her shoulder, he says, “Am I awful? For not telling him? For just- he died- and I didn’t tell…”

“ _No_ ,” his mom says, so fiercely he’s startled. “He didn’t deserve this part of you. He didn’t deserve any part of you.”

He draws back and looks at her. There’s steel in her eyes. 

“I know I haven’t- I haven’t been around as much as I should have been. For you, or for El, or for Jonathan. But that’s gonna change. When we end this-” She swallows. “When we end this, I’m gonna do better. But no matter- no matter what, I will _always_ be here for you, okay? Always. No matter what. You can come to me with anything. Anything at all.”

He sniffs, wipes his nose, smiles a little at her. “Okay.”

She opens her mouth to speak again but then there’s a knock on the door and she jumps, wipes at her eyes. “Yes?”

It’s Hopper. He looks genuinely apologetic - but also tense, nervous. “We need to talk. We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

She nods. Will takes a deep breath. “You okay?” she whispers to him. He nods. Then she stands up, still holding his hand, and pulls him up too.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When Joyce reaches for coffee granules, Hopper gently blocks her arm and shakes his head. “I think he’s gonna need something stronger, don’t you?” He looks back at Scott Clarke, visible through the kitchen doorway, who’s sitting on the couch looking white as a sheet. 

She gives him a rueful look before grabbing the bottle of whiskey that’s sitting on the counter with a bloody thumbprint on the label. “You’re not gonna give me any shit, are you?” she says, in a loud whisper. 

“I don’t-”

She gestures to Clarke with the bottle of whiskey. “You know what I’m talking about.”

He blinks at her. Yeah, okay, he remembers that. In hindsight - after everything - it was really fucking stupid. It was- come to think of it, he has a lot to say to her now. He spent several of those frigid Russian months staring at walls and having imaginary conversations with her, but now he finds the words dying on his tongue. He doesn’t know what to say. “I- I’m sorry. About all that,” he tries. She looks at him through narrowed eyes. She’s still so beautiful, even looking tired and thin, even with that gray streak in her hair, her eyes still faintly red. “I’m not gonna give you any shit.”

“Good,” she says, and looks at him for a moment longer. Then she gets out some mugs and takes them and the whiskey back into the living room, and he has no choice but to follow. He sits down on the other end of the couch, in the spot El had clearly been saving for him. She’s on the floor, and she leans her head back against his knee. He ruffles her hair automatically and tries to fight the feeling that none of this is real; that it will all be torn away again before long. 

Joyce hands him a mug of whiskey, then passes one to Clarke and one to Karen. She pours one out for herself and then sits down on the couch beside him. He’s not sure whether her shoulder brushing his is intentional or not.

“-real or not?” Karen is questioning. Clarke looks like he’s stepped out of his body, but he’s clutching the mug of whiskey tight. Hopper doesn’t blame him. This is some weird shit.

“Why wouldn’t it be real?” Dustin’s voice is loud with alarm. “Son of a bitch, why wouldn’t it be real?”

“Language,” Karen reprimands, and Hopper resists the urge to laugh. 

“It could have been a trick of the Beholder,” Will says. “Like the demodogs Jonathan, Nancy and Steve saw at that old building.”

El shakes her head. “No. I think- I think it was _real._ ”

“When- when we were in the past, at my prom, I heard it there. I think somehow- it came with you,” Joyce says. 

“Wait, wait, when you were in the past, it was because you were looking for me, right?” Hopper takes a sip of whiskey, enjoys the way it burns on its way down. Will nods and El twists around to look at him. “And then you found me, and you brought me here from Russia. But in Russia-”

“There was a demogorgon too,” Joyce whispers. Her face is horrified. “You think-”

“Somehow you rescued it as well as me,” he says. “So yeah, it’s real.”

Will and El look stricken. He feels the same - because does that mean this is his fault? Some of those kids are still out there with it, in the path of danger, the threat of death. Karen and the other kids had to be coaxed into slowing down for a moment and not rushing out headlong to find them, because they had to sit down and try to understand the threat first.

“Can we rewind, for a hot sec? So there’s lots of different universes, is that what you’re saying? And the Beholder can tap into all of them?” Dustin says, like he’s trying to understand. Hopper’s given up trying.

Joyce nods. “Like the Everett Interpretation,” Clarke says quietly. 

Everyone looks at him. “The what?” Joyce asks, frowning.

“Hugh Everett’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The universe is constantly branching out - every outcome to every set of variables occurs, but only in one ‘world’ each. It follows-”

“Schrodinger’s cat.” Erica crosses her arms as everyone stares at her. “What? I like physics.”

“Exactly, Erica,” Clarke says. He’s no longer clutching his whiskey quite so tightly - it occurs to Hopper that he’s much more comfortable now he’s thinking of this as a teaching moment. “Schrodinger imagined an experiment in which he would place a cat in a box, alongside a radioactive substance. If a single atom of that substance decays, the cat will die. But you don’t know if it’s dead until you open the box. The Copenhagen interpretation decides that the cat is simultaneously alive and dead, until you open it. The Everett interpretation decides that the moment that atom decays - and it will decay, at least in one world - the universe splits off into two different paths. One in which the cat is dead, and one-”

“In which it is alive,” Dustin finishes, a sort of wonder in his voice. “So… that’s it.”

“That’s it,” Joyce says quietly. “Everything I saw- it was the result of different things changing. Sometimes the smallest things.”

“Right,” Clarke says. “And with everything you’ve told me- time, Will’s power of teleportation, the Upside Down-” He frowns and scours the coffee table, apparently looking for something. “Do you have- do you have a sheet of paper?”

Will nods and gets to his feet. He returns from the kitchen with a sheet of paper - Hopper catches a flash of a drawing, something like an eye, before Clarke starts to fold it up in small strips, like when you make a paper fan. When he’s finished he stretches it out and holds it up, folded into zigzagged ridges. 

“Okay, so let’s imagine this is us.” He indicates the first upsloping side of the paper, at the edge. “And _this_ is the Upside Down.” He taps the triangle of space next to it, divided by a fold of paper. “On the other side of that is our world again, but geographically different.” This is the next trough of paper. “Then it’s the Upside Down, and then it’s our world again - but at different times. And then the Upside Down, and then the different universes at the very end.”

Hopper narrows his eyes as he studies it. He’s not sure he knows where this is going - by the looks on the others’ faces, they don’t either. 

Clarke grabs a pen and folds the paper together again. He punches the pen through - but not all the way through. When he unfolds it, it’s only penetrated to the second fold. “That’s what Will can do. He can travel geographically in an instant - and it sounds like through time as well.”

The pen has gone through the spaces he labelled as the Upside Down as well. Which means- “So it’s linked to the Upside Down? It- it’s channelled through that?” Will is frowning.

“Yes. That’s my theory, anyway. And then you, Mrs. Byers-”

“Joyce,” she says, and then glances sternly at Hopper, though he wasn’t going to say anything.

“Joyce,” Clarke says apologetically. “You somehow have access to this bit, the other universes.” He taps the other end of the paper. 

“The demogorgon-” She swallows visibly. “It didn’t attack me. It stared me right in the face and it didn’t _do_ anything, just let me go. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

“Where does the Beholder fit into this? Does it shoot through all the layers, like Will only further?” Robin, who’s until now been silent, asks. 

“No, remember the singularity thing? How it exists outside of time, outside of space or anything?” Dustin says. 

“Exactly. I think the Beholder is here.” Clarke indicates the space alongside the paper - no boundaries, nothing. “It exists outside of all this - so it can access everything.”

“And it can manipulate reality,” Hopper says quietly. He thinks about Lonnie, about the corpse he buried in the backyard. The ground was hard with frost, but he’s used to that. Russia is frostier. He’s not going to deny it - killing Lonnie’s facsimile wasn’t exactly difficult for him. The guy’s _awful_ \- and the fact that it wasn’t him at all? Well. That makes it worse. (Easier?) 

“An apex predator,” Robin says. “Top of the food chain, right? Maybe- maybe that’s why the demogorgon didn’t attack Joyce. Because the Beholder showed her these things.”

“But I only saw them after we left Russia. When we crossed the county line.”

“It exists outside of time, remember?” Dustin says. “Like…”

“Like in Jonathan’s book.” Everyone turns to look at El, who looks back with wide eyes. Then she gets to her feet and runs down the hallway, returning with a battered copy of Vonnegut’s _Slaughterhouse Five._ “The Tra-Tralfmadorians are aliens, and they see time differently to us. They see- they see it all at once.” She opens the book and slowly reads a passage, stuttering over it more than once: “ _The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments._ ” She closes the book and looks up. Hopper’s so proud of her. “Like that.”

“So-”

“It’s always existed.”

“And it can dip in and out of time as it wants?”

“So once Mom was marked by it-” 

“I’m marked forever,” Joyce says quietly. Her voice is empty, defeated. Hopper touches her arm and expects her to recoil; instead, she sinks into the touch. “When I was ten- my aunt- I think she saw it. She used to live up here.”

The words echo around the room, silent now, as everyone processes the enormity of what they’re facing.

Finally, Erica says, “So if it’s that much more powerful than us-”

“How the hell do we stop it?”

El is chewing her lip. “I stopped the Mind Flayer before. And- I can’t, anymore. But what if- Will?”

Will’s eyes widen. “I don’t- how would I do that?” 

“We need to get the other kids back first,” Hopper says firmly, almost surprising himself with the words. But he knows he’s right. The rest can wait. The kids are too important.

“Yes, we do.” Karen has stood up, crossing her arms. “We need to go out there-”

“Not all of us,” Hopper counters, as he stands up too. “I’ve got the Kalashnikov, so-”

Dustin jumps to his feet. “Yeah, and you don’t know this town nor do you know where we last saw them. You can’t go on your own.”

“Well, I’m coming with you.” Karen’s jaw is in a tight, defiant line.

“That’s not-”

“Mike is _out there_ , with that- with that _thing_ in the cold _-_ he’s my _son_ -”

Hopper’s had this argument before. He didn’t win it then, with Joyce, and he isn’t going to win it now, with Karen. And he knows about _cold._ He nods. “Okay.”

“And I’ll show you where to go. Great,” Dustin says, nodding. 

“No, that isn’t-”

“Okay,” Karen interrupts. Everyone stares at her. “Dustin, Hopper and I will go. The rest of you stay here and work out how to stop this thing.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

The phone rings out for several moments before someone answers. Steve clutches the receiver close and tugs his jacket tighter around his body, resisting the urge to glance at Jonathan for reassurance. This is fine. This will be fine.

“You’ve reached the office of John Harrington, how may I help you?”

“Uh, hi, this is Steve, Steve Harrington? Can I speak to my dad, please?”

The woman on the other end of the phone seems to frown. “Sorry, I’m afraid he’s away on business. I can take a message?”

Steve shakes his head, though he knows she can’t see him, and hangs up. On instinct, he knows where his dad is. And on instinct, he grabs the tattered phonebook on the shelf in the booth and flicks through it to find the motels; on instinct, he tears the page out and lets Jonathan drive them around all the motels in the area, knocking on doors and politely explaining to receptionists that he’s just a lost teenager looking for his dad. No cigar, not until Beechwood Motel just north of Duluth, where he says to the clerk, “Hey, I’m looking for my dad, John Harrington?” and to his surprise she nods, popping her gum, and says “Room 37, just round the corner.”

Well. It’s almost too easy, to be honest. His dad using his own name, the clerk giving him the number without so much as a second glance? It’s too easy. But Steve doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he goes along with it. He goes along with it, along the walkway in the blustery cold, the evening drawing in, Jonathan and Nancy following him and Nancy with her gun drawn. He doesn’t like the thought that she might use it. 

He doesn’t like the thought that she might have to use it.

They reach 37; he knocks on the door. And then knocks again, when there’s no answer. He’s reduced to pounding on it with his fist when it finally opens and he comes face to face with the barrel of his dad’s Beretta. 

“Hey, dad,” he says weakly, raising a hand in a wave. 

Slowly, achingly slowly, the gun is lowered. His dad looks between the three of them - Steve doesn’t miss the way his lip curls at the sight of Jonathan - before tugging him inside. Inside it’s dark, faintly dingy, though he’s pleasantly surprised to see that his father is alone. No woman in his bed. 

“What are you _doing_ here?” his dad hisses. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?”

“Yeah, actually, I do,” Steve says, casually. God, his dad has no idea. No idea of what he’s been through these past few years. He thinks partying is his biggest problem. “Now, you’re gonna tell me everything you know about Hawkins Lab and the Department of Energy.”

His dad scoffs, looks between Nancy and Jonathan and the exit. “What is this, some kind of sick prank? Have these kids roped you into this? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Steven. I don’t-”

“God, you must think we’re so stupid,” Nancy interrupts, rolling her eyes. Steve sends her a warning look. _I’ll handle this._ He’s not sure if she’ll listen to him, but he has to try. This is his dad. He knows how to play this.

“I saw the files, dad. Your name, the Department of Energy. You’re involved somehow. I just wanna know how.”

A crack in the facade. His dad sits down on the bed, lowers the gun to between his knees, rubs his lined forehead. “You don’t understand. It was- it was good business, at first. It’s the government. And they don’t usually pay well - for anything except military. It was military, Steven. It was a _goldmine._ And by the time I knew what was going on-”

“It was too late,” he finishes. God.

His dad nods. “Real estate, I work in real estate, you know that. Only, government needs property too, right? I got a contract easily enough. Scouting out locations for blacksites, organising land deeds. It was rudimentary. I was never involved with what happened at those locations, not ever. I was removed from it.”

“What about the one here?” he whispers. “The one with my name on it?”

His dad lets out a humorless laugh. “I figured you saw that. I’m sorry, Steven, you probably thought it was part of some grand legacy for you. The truth is far simpler than that. Tax reasons.”

Tax reasons. His name- is on the deeds for that _place_ \- the home of the Beholder- for _tax reasons?_ Fury bubbles up inside him. But then there’s a calming hand on his arm - Jonathan’s hand. With an effort, he swallows his rage. 

“What happened there? At that place?” Nancy’s voice is soft.

His dad shakes his head. “It- The truth is, we don’t know. Not exactly. They were conducting experiments, the usual experiments. The same atrocities they always commit. But then this time - it went wrong somehow.”

“When?”

“1980. Five years after it was commissioned. The whole place went dark, was shut down. I was told they kept an eye, but nothing strange happened after that. Nothing, until July last year. They got a strange reading. It seemed to be nothing - but then a few days ago, everything _spiked_ around here.”

“Spiked?”

His dad looks at him with raised, weary eyebrows. “Steven, how much do you know?”

“How much do I-” He cuts himself off. Glances at Jonathan, then at Nancy. There’s no point in lying. “Everything. Probably more than you.”

“Then you know about Eleven,” his dad says. The blood starts to rush in Steve’s ears. “You know they’re after her. These spikes? They were her. Do you think it’s a coincidence that it’s all happening in the same place? And now they’re coming for her.”

“Who is?” he asks, voice barely a whisper.

“Brenner. Brenner and his men.”

“How long do we have?” Nancy presses, desperation in her eyes. Her hand has tightened on her gun; her knuckles have gone white.

Again, his dad laughs without a shred of humor. “They’re already here.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits: [hanging on the telephone](https://open.spotify.com/track/343iSx7QQ41UeroboMrhmh?si=z1eux_g7SDS5Rmju-Y0HIw) by blondie.
> 
> as always, let me know your thoughts <3


	7. Eaden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The agents close in, and the group discovers that the town hides a more sinister truth than they realised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for this chapter: medical malpractice, violence, gore, implied/referenced self harm, implied/referenced suicide, implied/referenced police abuse of power + racism, implied/referenced domestic violence

“There are forces loose in this universe that we don’t even know about yet, and some we can observe only at a remove of millions of light-years . . . and breathe a sigh of relief because of it. The last time I looked at that film I began to think of the girl as a crack—a chink, if you like—in the very smelter of creation.”  
– Stephen King, _Firestarter_ (1980)

“You asked me once, What are we made of? Well, these are the things we’re made of.”  
– Richard Siken, _The Stag and the Quiver_ (2014)

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Tuesday, January 21st, 1986**  
**Somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota**

Driving through town feels strange, surreal. The streets are empty - and though it’s a snowy, blustery evening that’s still surprising, somehow. Eerie. As Joyce drives she feels like somehow everyone’s been plucked off the surface of the earth, everyone but her. Leaving her here alone.

She was loath to leave Will and El behind at the house, especially now Jonathan’s gone god knows where. But equally it was too dangerous to bring them with her, and she needs to do this herself. It’s her only option.

So when she pulls into the parking lot of the doctor’s office, she can only hope that he’s still here.

True enough, he is. She marches right past the receptionist, who makes a few half-hearted attempts at stopping her before giving up entirely, and enters the room without knocking. It’s empty of a patient, anyway. Dr. Anton is flipping idly through a file and looks up as if he was waiting for her. “Ms. Horowitz,” he says, giving her a smile that hides more than it reveals. “Please, have a seat.”

She remains standing. Her handgun, the one she still hasn’t fired, sits in her pocket with her hand wrapped tightly around the grip. She can’t trust anyone or anything now, not after Lonnie. Thinking about it sets a cold, tight feeling in her chest. Because she didn’t _like_ Lonnie, sure, she didn’t tell him where she moved, she cut him out of her life because he had all the tenacity of a climbing plant - but once upon a time, not all that long ago, she loved him. And he became nothing more than a puppet of _it_ , the Beholder as they’re calling it. Every element of her life ripped up and turned inside out. Torn to pieces.

“What can I do for you?” he asks, crossing his legs and lacing his fingers together on his knee.

She swallows. The last time she was here he denied her the medication, the medication she’d become so used to needing that she felt crazy without it. Maybe she’s wrong to suspect it, maybe she’ll get told she is crazy after all - but something doesn’t feel right. And Dr. Anton has always had something weird behind his eyes.

“I don’t want any lies,” she says. “There was a reason I couldn’t fill my prescription, wasn’t there? You wanted me to stop taking the meds.”

Dr. Anton looks at her for a moment. “It was a simple misprint, it wasn’t-”

She takes the gun out of her pocket. 

He pales and sits up a little straighter. “Ms. Horowitz, this isn’t-”

“I said no lies,” she says, voice cold. She’s gripping the gun tightly but she’s not going to use it. She’s saving the bullets for the demogorgon, should she need to. “I need to know what the hell is going on here.”

Finally, he looks at her, and he doesn’t nod but she feels him relent anyway. What he says sends a cold drip down her spine: “I couldn’t help it. Any of it. I swear I wrote the right prescription at first… and then I couldn’t prescribe you any more. It wouldn’t let me. It stopped you from seeing… and then it wanted you to see.”

_It._ So she was right. It controls Dr. Anton too. Is he like Lonnie? Is he dead somewhere, somewhere else? Is it the last ghost of him that’s telling her all these things that the Beholder doesn’t want her to know? “Why?” she asks, but she’s already guessed the answer. 

“It was hungry,” he whispers. 

She feels ill. 

“It wants to consume you. It’s already consumed this town.”

She moves closer. “This town? The whole town?”

He doesn’t answer, something manic in his eyes. His words come out fast and slurred, spilling out unstoppably. “Do you know what I was? I was a KGB sleeper agent.” Her eyes widen. It occurs to her that he’s talking to her out of desperation - not to save himself from her gun, because he could overpower her in a second, but to spread the truth about what happened here and prevent it from happening anywhere else. Somehow he’s still inside this, the Beholder’s pale imitation of his life, but he’s there enough to help her. “I was planted in this town because of the US Department of Energy’s operations in the lab by the town line. I was here simply to observe. There were reports of something… strange. But everything was quiet - until July last year. Then it got aggressive. Then-” And he frowns, and his face goes slack, and it’s like she’s watching him die all over again.

“It took the town,” she finishes for him. The town, the whole town. Every part of it. The movie theatre where Jonathan works; the boys Will is friends with at school; Mickey, her asshole of a boss. All of it a fiction. 

“It’s too late for me. For everyone here. But for you-”

She thinks about _July._ There’s a sick well opening up in her chest, because that can’t be a coincidence, can it? She closed the gate at the beginning of July. Something happened here in July. If this is another Mind Flayer thing-

Something in the air changes. The second she has the thought something is pressing on her skull, more insistently than before - because before it was simply a veil. Now it’s a battering ram.

Before the vision overtakes her Dr. Anton’s face changes - he spits out “ _It knows_ ,” before his voice becomes the one that grates on her spine: 

    stupid g **irl**.

But it’s afraid.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When El hears an engine coming up the driveway, she knows they’ve come for her.

The others don’t. They perk up, expecting Joyce back, expecting Hopper and Mrs. Wheeler and Mike and Max and Lucas back - but it’s not them. El knows this with the cold certainty of a stone in her gut. It’s not them.

Mr. Clarke, the teacher Dustin likes, stands up when Will looks like he’s about to open the door. He, too, is cautious. “Wait, Will, hold on. Get away from the-”

Door bursts open. People shouting; lights everywhere, heavy boots. Panic. Will shouting _get off of me_ , Mr. Clarke in handcuffs. El sits on the floor with wide eyes as everything around her moves slower and slower, as sounds become muffled like they’re underwater, as Papa walks in.

She digs her nails into her palms so hard she feels blood trickle down her skin, but she barely registers the pain. Her eyes are fixed on him. “Hello, Eleven,” he says through the haze. He looks no different. The same, stepped right out of both dreams and nightmares. “You can come with me now.”

She looks at him dully. If she had her powers, none of this would be happening. Papa would be dead in front of her and they’d be safe. She looks around her. Kali is limp on the floor, a man with a needle having lowered her to the ground. Will is held in a relaxed but firm chokehold, looking at her with wide, pleading eyes. The others are held too; she sees Robin let out a cry of pain as they jostle her shoulder. And El’s fists clench tighter. Because if she still had her powers-

But she doesn’t. 

All she can do is watch. At best she’s Will’s sidekick - and that’s not a title she minds, not really. But times like these…

Watching Mrs. Wheeler and Dustin and Hopper - Hopper who she only just got back - go off to find Mike and Max and Lucas while she had to sit here, powerless, helpless-

“You’re home now, Eleven,” Papa says, crouching down in front of her. She stares at him distrustfully. He wasn’t always horrible. He didn’t always lock her in the dark - sometimes he brought her coloring pencils, and reams of creamy paper, and stuffed animals that made her room feel a little less lonely. “I can help you. I can fix you.” He holds out a hand. “Let me fix you.”

She looks around the room again, at Kali’s unmoving body, chest barely rising and falling. She thinks about the demogorgon screeching at them in the road, about the Beholder reaching into their minds and _changing_ things. Joyce in that hospital just like when she was seventeen.

She wants to help them.

She can’t help them like this.

Papa can fix her.

She takes his hand.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“Left! Go left!”

“What?” Lucas shouts, not daring to turn his head to look at Mike because that might cost him speed. It’s gaining on them. All he knows is it’s gaining on them and if he looks back then it will get them. 

“Left!” Max shouts, and after everything he has to trust them, so he swerves left. It’s a grassy alley between houses, barely illuminated by the adjacent porch lights - so he nearly runs smack into the fence that looms up out of the dark. He spots it in time, though, and vaults neatly over it. Maybe his dedication to basketball has come in handy.

He hears Max land behind him and keep running, following him down the passage. The demogorgon is somewhere behind them, hopefully too big, too ungainly for the narrow gap- 

They hope, at least. And Mike is behind them too, not far behind, less fit than Lucas, less energetic than Max. They’re lucky he spotted this passage. If he hadn’t-

“Lucas.” Max’s voice is terrified, desperate. She’s panting for breath. He looks around and she’s _stopped_ \- why has she _stopped-_ “ _Mike_.”

Mike isn’t behind her. The passage behind her to the fence is empty. Which means that-

He doesn’t even think about it. He races back to the fence, pulls himself up, drops down on the other side. Mike is sprawled on the ground, frantically scrambling backwards as he faces up at the demogorgon’s dripping, alien jaws. Lucas spots a plant pot in the grass, grabs it with a hand numb from cold, throws it as hard as he can. It collides with the monster’s skull and it flinches. But it won’t be held off for long, Lucas knows. He grabs Mike’s arm and pulls him to his feet, shoves him over the fence and follows.

Then there’s the sound of breaking wood.

“Come on!” he yells, as the demogorgon bursts through behind them. He grabs both their hands and drags them along with him, lungs burning with ice, heart pounding. Then the passage opens up and there’s a screen door on the left and Max grabs another plant pot, smashes the window, reaches her arm through and opens the door. He hears her curse. Blood runs down her arm. Then they slam the door on it and look for a place to hide.

“Here!” Mike hisses. The house is dark and empty but Lucas can squint to make out the pantry. There’s no time to argue - he and Max follow Mike inside. Lucas stares through the crack in the hinges as Max and Mike crouch down behind him. The kitchen is dark, silent. No movement at all. He bites his lip as he keeps on looking, sure that the demogorgon hasn’t just gone. It can’t have just gone.

And then-

He nearly jumps out of his skin. The view to the rest of the kitchen is blocked - blocked by something sinuous, and white, and evil. He doesn’t dare move. Doesn’t dare breathe. The stench rolling off of it is overwhelming, inhuman, something rotting and dying. Its ribs twitch with what Lucas guesses is breath; it snorts out foul-smelling air. His eyes water. 

He wants to close his eyes. If it’s going to turn and find them here- tear the door off and rip each of them in half- he doesn’t want to see it. But he’s transfixed. He can’t stop looking. His hands are burning in the sudden warmth of the house.

He’s starting to pray when the lights flicker on. He looks up, startled, and just as quickly they flicker off. When he looks back through the door-

The demogorgon is gone. It’s gone. He doesn’t let himself breathe, not for another three minutes at least, but there’s no movement in the room. No sound. It’s gone. Slowly, he sinks to the floor. He feels suddenly lightheaded. _Holy shit._ That was close, unbelievably close. Too close for comfort. 

“How did it know we were here?” Max whispers. Her voice is thin.

He looks at her. She’s clutching at her arm. Her fingers are stained red. “Blood,” he says. Her eyes widen. 

“Shit,” she says. “That means-”

“We dress it, and we wait for it to stop bleeding, and we hope it doesn’t come back in the meantime.” Mike’s voice doesn’t waver. Lucas nods and, wrist rocket out of his bag and held aloft, he goes out to look for supplies. He finds them when he creeps into the downstairs bathroom - a first aid kit with bandages and antiseptic - and, heart in his throat, he brings the whole thing back to the pantry and closes the door again. Mike takes the antiseptic and Max offers her arm: “This is gonna hurt,” he warns.

“Just get it over with,” she snaps. When he trickles it into the wound she flinches and her other hand finds Lucas’ - he blinks in surprise and lets her take it. Tries not to enjoy it too much, because he knows she’ll pull away just as fast.

Mike wraps it up in bandages, which stain red almost immediately. Lucas doesn’t like the look of that. But then Max pulls away - not from Lucas, but from Mike. There’s a determined look on her face. “While we’re here,” she says, “you two can actually talk to each other and fix whatever’s going on.”

“Max-”

“Do it,” she insists. “I’m waiting.”

Warily, they size each other up. Finally, Mike speaks. “Lucas, I didn’t-” He glances at Max. “I knew you would be jealous if you knew that Max was involved in all this. You were already jealous that we’re friends. And when I tried to tell you about what was going on you just shut it down and it was stupid because Max and I are just _friends_ , that’s _it._ ”

“I know that,” Lucas says quietly. He does know that. But Mike is right, on some level, because he was jealous. 

“You were pretending like this was all over and- for what? Some stupid basketball game?”

“It’s more than that, Mike.” His voice comes out tired. “I was pretending it was all over to convince myself that maybe Hawkins is still safe. That maybe- I don’t know. That we could still stay here.”

“What?” Max’s eyes are wide, alarmed.

“My parents want to move, Max. Hawkins- even without the whole Upside Down thing, Hawkins has changed. Chief Randall… he’s not like Hopper. You know the rumor about the ticket my parents got?” They nod. “Wasn’t a rumor. He pulled them over doing forty in a fifty zone. And it’s not just that, it’s everything. The way all the small businesses went bust and it’s just big brands now. All this stuff on the TV, with Pat Pulling and everything- Listen, people in Hawkins are scared. After everything that happened last year, all the people who died? They’re scared. And when people in a small town get scared, people like me are the first to get the blame.”

“Lucas-”

“Don’t.” He sighs, closes his eyes. “It’s how it is. So my parents wanna move us someplace else, somewhere bigger. They’re looking at Fort Wayne.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath from Max. He looks at her. She’s gone pale, whether from pain or from what he’s just told her, he doesn’t know. 

“I thought- if I could be sure it wasn’t all happening again, if I could throw myself into sport and high school and everything, then maybe I could convince myself that I wanted to stay too.”

Mike stares at him. “You- you don’t want to stay?” His voice is young, small.

“This isn’t normal, Mike. None of this is normal. We shouldn’t have to fight monsters once a year. Something like basketball _should_ be our biggest problem. And I figure- if we move somewhere else, maybe it will be.”

He’s not sure he even had these thoughts until he said them, but now there’s no taking them back, and he finds them to be true. He wants out. He wants his family to be safe. (He wants Max to come with him-)

“You were distancing yourself,” Max says, with something like realisation in her voice. “You didn’t want it to hurt us when you moved.”

Lucas opens his mouth to respond and then closes it. “Yeah, I guess,” he mumbles after a moment. She reaches out and takes his hand again. He laces their fingers together. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

“Will leaving really screwed everything up, huh,” Mike says. His tone is sad. “We stopped talking to each other.”

“We should never have done that,” Lucas says. “I’m sorry for not talking to you.”

“And I’m sorry for not talking to you,” Max whispers. 

‘Let’s not do that again, okay?” Mike wears a wobbly smile. 

Then he reaches behind Max and comes out with a packet of chips, which he pops open.

“Gross, Mike, we were having a moment here,” Max says, rolling her eyes.

“What? I’m hungry.” He eats one, then wrinkles his nose. “Gross, that’s totally old.”

Lucas frowns, grabs for the packet. “I don’t-”

The door opens. All three of them tense and Lucas grabs for his wrist rocket, aiming it up to see- 

Hopper. It’s one thing to be told he’s alive, quite another to see him in the flesh. Behind him is Dustin, and Mrs. Wheeler, which is really goddamn weird too. “Okay,” Hopper says. “Let’s get the hell out of here, shall we?”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Steve sits in the passenger seat of his car and clenches his fists as _something_ presses against his mind.

It’s that vision again, he knows it. The same one he had back at the ruined compound, the same one he had when they were driving out of town and he nearly crashed the car and killed all three of them. He doesn’t trust himself now. Even though they supposedly left the perimeter, which means they should be safe. He doesn’t feel safe.

It’s trying to get in.

When he was driving, it was his dad he saw. Just his dad, smiling at him. That’s it. A warm, proud smile. It’s almost embarrassing. No, scratch that, it is embarrassing, because he nearly crashed the car over that and his dad is a piece of shit. 

He grinds his teeth, and then looks up as Nancy opens the door and slips into the driver’s seat. “Jonathan’s still trying to call his mom,” she says. Right. The phones are dead but they’ve gotta try, right? Given that Brenner and his lot are closing in on Hawkins right as they speak. “You okay? Your dad-”

“Is a piece of shit,” he interrupts. “We already knew that, Nance. He just confirmed it.”

She’s watching him with a strange expression on her face. He tries not to notice, but it lasts long enough that finally he has to look at her. He raises an eyebrow. “What?”

She flushes. The sight still makes him ache. “I- just- I’m sorry.”

“For what?” He’s not trying to drag it out of her; he genuinely doesn’t know. 

“For not listening to you. For- for insisting that we do things my way, and then just doing it anyway when you didn’t agree.”

He stays silent. He’s very familiar with the bulldozer aspect of her personality - she wouldn’t be Nancy without it. Still, it’s one of her least attractive qualities at times (or most, depending on the context). 

“I was wrong.” She lets out a breath, as if she’s startled by her own words, but then she doubles down on them. “I was wrong to do what I did. If I’d listened to you then the kids might not have got involved, and they might not have known where El is, and-“

“That’s a lotta ifs and mights, Nance.” He touches her arm, just briefly. Is it him or does she shiver at the touch? “We don’t know what would have happened.”

“Yeah, but still. I always do this and one day it will lead to something bad, I know it. It’s like last year, when I was so- so _convinced_ that I was right about the rats, and I got Jonathan and me fired because I was so- so stubborn, and selfish, because he needed that internship, y’know? And I didn’t, not really.” She meets his eyes and he nods. He knows. The Byers’ financial status isn’t exactly a secret about town, another thing that’s so unfair. “I dragged him down this path and then _he_ apologised to _me._ He said stuff too but- it was my fault. I wasn’t thinking about him, I was only thinking about myself and my story.”

“Sounds like you should be saying all this to Jonathan, Nance,” and it’s half a joke but it’s not, not really. He hasn’t heard this story, hasn’t heard about trouble in paradise. What surprises him most is that there’s no twinge of spiteful relief in him, just concern. Desire for them to be happy.

“But I’m saying it to you. Because I did the same thing to you.”

When they were together, everyone always assumed that Steve was the hothead, that Nancy was the voice of reason. They’re wrong, obviously. With Jonathan it’s easier to see the truth: Jonathan is quieter, calmer. But Jonathan can be bowled over, dragged along by Nancy’s enthusiasm. Steve is louder than that, better at convincing, at arguing, at disagreeing. That’s partly why they worked and partly why they didn’t.

“Okay,” he says softly. “Thanks.”

She gives him a weak smile. And then Jonathan gets into the backseat with desperate eyes and the moment is over, for now, because he’s saying “No answer,” and that means they have to go, right now.

“Wait,” Nancy says. “Are you okay with just… leaving your dad here?”

Steve looks up at room 37 on the walkway above them. His dad, cowering behind that door with his Beretta. And he thinks about Jonathan saying _let’s do this_ without hesitation, even though his own dad was there, even though his whole family was there. Steve nods. “I hope I never see him again,” he says, scornfully.

Nancy nods, taking that as a yes, and drives off. It takes them about half an hour to get to the town line again-

Or to where the town line should be.

Because about half an hour into the journey, they start looking around at the forest, looking for the turning, looking for anything, but there’s nothing. It’s not like last time. The road just goes straight on, and on, and on, probably all the way to Canada. Nowhere to go but forward. No town. Nothing.

“We’re too late,” Jonathan whispers, as Nancy slows the car to a crawl. “The Beholder- it’s taken over.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

The truck has no windows. Robin isn’t sure how long they’ve been driving when Kali jerks in her lap, blinking, disoriented, a panicked haze in her eyes. “Hey, Kali, it’s okay,” Robin says, even though it isn’t okay and they might all be about to die. “It’s me.”

“Robin?” Kali frowns, some of the fear leaving her face. “What- where are we?”

Robin can only shake her head. “I don’t know.” She’s not handcuffed but opposite her Mr. Clarke and Erica (Erica! An eleven year old!) are. They handcuffed Kali too, even though she was unconscious most of the journey. Robin feels sick fear rolling in her gut, a feeling that’s only grown stronger with each mile. What do they want with them? What are they gonna do to them? It can’t be as bad as the Russians, can it? Can it? 

“Help me-” 

The truck stops moving. Robin bites her lip so hard she tastes blood. Looking down at Kali, she sees terror in her eyes. 

“It’s not true,” Kali whispers. “What they tell you, it’s not true.” 

“What?”

The doors slam open. Soldiers rush in, grabbing Mr. Clarke and Erica, grabbing Kali and dragging her away. “I didn’t mean to do it! It’s not true! Do not believe them- Robin!”

Her voice fades as she disappears from view. Robin stares after her, horrified, trying to understand. What did she mean? What didn’t she mean to do?

A soldier takes Robin by the arm and guides her down a gray, clinical hallway. It’s only when they reach what’s essentially a hospital room that she realises her shoulder is hurting again, hurting badly. Getting shot hurts like a bitch. 

She lets them lay her down on the bed and inspect the makeshift dressing, exposed under the baggy vest top Jonathan lent her. She clenches her fist and closes her eyes, and when she opens them again there’s an IV in her arm and the pain has dulled to a faint ache, rather than a roar. Mr. Clarke and Erica are here too. Mr. Clarke looks very out of his depth - Erica less so. Robin guesses she’s done it all before.

“What did Kali say to you?” Erica demands. “When they were taking her away?”

Robin frowns. “She said… _It’s not true. I didn’t mean to do it._ What do you think that means?”

There’s a silence. Then, “She was a test subject, right? In a lab. They experimented on her…”

“The other night,” - she refuses to blush - “we were talking, and she said she’d done bad things. And then just now, she said she didn’t mean to do ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is.” She’s hit by a sudden realisation; she sits up a little. “Her powers, they’re to do with sight, right? She can make you see whatever she wants you to see. _Just like the Beholder._ ”

“You think-”

“She let it in,” Mr. Clarke finishes, voice full of something like scientific curiosity. Robin eyes him with unease. 

“She didn’t mean to,” Robin repeats. “She said she hurt people to escape the lab, in 1980. What if this is what she meant? Letting in the Beholder?”

“But if she brought it here in 1980…”

“What’s it been doing all this time?” Mr. Clarke finishes, frowning. “If it wants to _consume_ opportunities then why hasn’t it done so already?”

Robin can’t think like this, stuck in bed. She swings her legs to the floor and drags the IV stand along with her as she paces, only wincing every so often. “Say... “ She frowns. ‘Say it was waiting. Biding its time. Dormant. Or-” She turns to Erica. “Do you have your DnD manual?”

It’s a long shot. But by some miracle, Erica nods a little sheepishly and tugs it out of her backpack. Robin takes it and flicks to the page about the Beholder. “ _Xenophobic isolationists_ ,” she reads out. “That makes sense, doesn’t it? It just stayed in its little area, up here, in that ruined facility. _Because they refuse to share territory with others, most beholders withdraw to frigid hills, abandoned ruins, and deep caverns to scheme._ That’s it. The Beholder doesn’t want anything else.”

“But that’s just a game,” Erica says.

“Yeah, but… what if we’ve been looking at this the wrong way all along? The Beholder feasts on opportunity but that’s- that’s just its food. It doesn’t seem like it would take over the town to get it.” She starts to pace again. “This town is kind of out of date, right? No new music, no new movies in the theatre. They’re still showing _The Breakfast Club._ That came out last February. So this town wasn’t frozen in time before then. It was only after. So something happened to make the Beholder act.”

Erica’s eyes have widened. “The Russians.”

Robin snaps her fingers. “The _Russians._ They opened the gate in July. The Mind Flayer came through it. And maybe, just maybe-”

“If it can flay a demogorgon,” Mr. Clarke says, “why not a Beholder?”

They stare at each other. 

Shit.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Joyce has been sat in the locked, empty room for about as long as she can stand before the door opens and someone comes in. A man she doesn’t recognise, followed by Owens, who looks at her sorrowfully, maybe even apologetically. Her nose is bleeding again. She wipes at it as she stares at them.

“What is this?” she asks, voice sharp. “You grab me out of the doctor’s office and you bring me here and lock me in and you don’t even have anything to say about it? Owens, I swear to god-”

“Sit down.” The voice of the man she doesn’t know is perfectly ordinary, calm, but there’s a note of steel in it. 

“No, I want an explanation. I want-”

“Sit down,” he says again. There’s a threat in it. This isn’t the hill she wants to die on, so she sits down. There’s only one chair. A table, next to it, with a recording device and a cup and a jug of water. When they brought her in here, still disoriented, dizzy from the Beholder’s vision, they gave her a set of white scrubs and told her to change, and then they took her clothes. The gun’s gone too. 

He moves to the tape recorder and turns it on. “Interview commencing,” he checks his watch, “0126 hours, Wednesday the 22nd of January, 1986. Present are Agent Leroy, Dr. Sam Owens, and Joyce Byers.”

“Horowitz,” she says. Her voice is thin, and he doesn’t appear to hear her. 

“Joyce, we’re here to debrief you after your experiences in the quantum zone. We’ll ask you some questions, which we’d like you to answer to the best of your ability.”

Wearily, she lifts her head. “The quantum zone?”

“Eaden. How long have you been living there?”

She blinks. The name of the town registers in her head as something she already knew, but she hadn’t been able to recall it before - not until now. _Eaden_. “Since October last year.”

“What made you decide to move there, from Hawkins?”

She hesitates. “If you want to know why I moved period? Ask the Russians. They’re the ones who built a goddamn fucking mall in my town and destroyed all the local businesses. I had to move. I had no choice.” No choice, mandated to her by the nightmares that woke her screaming every night. Money and goddamn trauma, hand in hand. “As for where I moved? I don’t know why I chose it. I just- my aunt used to live up around here. And when I opened a map…”

She trails off. There’s a dark suspicion forming in her mind. If the Beholder really exists outside of time- if it exists in Hawkins too- if it’s always had its mark on her-

Who’s to say it didn’t steer her into moving to Eaden in the first place?

“And when did you first become aware that something was… different about the town?” Leroy prods.

Instead of answering, she says, “I want a cigarette. Please.”

Leroy and Owens glance at each other. It’s clear to all three of them in the room that Leroy is in charge of the situation - but it’s also clear that this is not something he’s trying to broadcast. “Okay,” he says, finally. He looks at Owens again; Owens leaves and returns with a pack of Camels, which he places on the table. “So?”

She thinks. “Things- things were wrong about it the whole time. But I first- I first really noticed it in line at the pharmacy. There was this woman- she talked to me- about _it._ She said _it consumes worlds._ I thought she was some bible thumper but in hindsight…”

“You mentioned _it._ What do you mean by that?”

She opens her mouth to respond and no words come out. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t- “The kids, they called it the Beholder. Linked it to their DnD game, I don’t know. It’s at the heart of the _quantum zone._ It- what happened after Russia, that was it. It came after me.”

“Why do you think it came after you?”

She laughs bitterly. “I don’t know. I don’t- how would I know?” 

“If you had to guess.”

“If I had to guess. Jesus- Jesus Christ.” She fumbles with the pack of Camels, takes out a cigarette. Owens steps forward wordlessly to light it for her, and she takes a drag before continuing. “Alright, if I had to guess- well, we had theories about it. Something to do with what went wrong in your life. Missed opportunities. It’s no secret that my life has gone a whole lot of wrong. It’s probably-” she gestures to the file on the table, “it’s probably all in that goddamn file there, I don’t know, you work it out. Some of the others saw it but we thought that was more of a- I don’t know, a defence mechanism. It didn’t go after them in the same way. They didn’t- it didn’t _show_ them.”

“Show them what?”

“Everything. It was- everything.” Her nose is bleeding again; she feels the hot, wet trail running down her face and onto the clean white front of her scrubs. She wipes at it uselessly. Owens places a box of tissues on the table. “I can’t explain it. It can’t be explained.”

“We need you to try.”

She stares at him. “You- you need me- you need me to try? Fuck you. You’re the ones who brought it into this world in the first place. This is your fault.”

“It existed before us.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You really-” She stops, anxiously puffs on the cigarette. She’s so tired of dealing with these government men. “You don’t understand at all. Once it’s out there- in the world- Like Pandora’s box. Once you let it in, it’s everywhere. Always. Playing with things you don’t understand-”

“Then help us understand.” Leroy has crossed his arms over his chest.

She’s silent for a while, a long while. Her cigarette is nearly done. “It’s not that simple. It’s not-” She breaks off. Stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray Owens gives her, crosses her arms. “I want to see my children.”

“They’re perfectly safe. You can see them when you’ve been debriefed.”

“‘Perfectly safe’? Don’t you fucking dare give me that bullshit. You’ve spent the last three years of my life lying to me- No. Longer. You’ve been lying to me since 1957.” 

“Your aunt-”

“Shut up. I want to see my children.” She’s done with this. She’s done answering their questions for nothing in return. If they’ve done anything to her children- _anything_ -

“One more question, then, Mrs. Byers.”

“It’s Horowitz. Not Byers.”

“Ms. Horowitz. You said it showed you things, things that you can’t explain. But can you describe them? Any of what you saw?”

She scoffs. “You still don’t get it. You don’t want to know, trust me. Trust me. There are things in this world that- that we don’t need to know. That we shouldn’t know. You should have left it in the dark where it belongs.”

A strange expression comes into Leroy’s face. Something dark, calculated, almost… smug? “Then why was the one who brought it here found at your house?”

For a horrible, terrifying second she thinks they mean El. That somehow El brought it here- that somehow this is El’s fault-

“Subject 008,” he continues, as if he hadn’t noticed her panic, and she lets herself breathe. “We never intended to bring it here. But she did it herself.”

There’s a click as Owens presses _stop_ on the tape recorder. “Enough, Leroy,” he says quietly. “This isn’t an interrogation. We need her.”

A moment of silence, then: “Fine.” 

He beckons to the camera in the corner of the ceiling. After only a few seconds the door opens again, and in walks-

“Murray. What- what the fuck are you doing here-” This is where he’s been? All this time? When Steve and Nancy had to get her out of the hospital, when her ex-husband melted into a corpse on her living room floor? He left her for this? 

“Joyce, this is important. I’m sorry for leaving you but all of this is important.”

She crosses her arms and doesn’t answer him, just looks at him warily. His eyes are desperate, pleading. _All right, I’ll bite_. 

Leroy speaks. “Subject 008 allowed the quantum organism - I guess what you’d call the Beholder - into our universe in 1980. In doing so, she managed to escape our control. The facility was decommissioned, whatever she _brought in_ was presumed to have failed. Yet in July last year-”

“It took over the town,” she whispers. 

He nods. “And the perimeter is widening.”

_Perimeter._ Perimeter- _the perimeter protects us from them,_ that’s what Kali said. “How did you get into the town?” she asks, voice hard.

Owens frowns. “We just- we just drove in. Why?”

She feels cold. A rush of it, like a bucket of ice water. Because she’d be a fool to deny the Beholder’s power. It controls that town, now. It controlled Lonnie and it controls Dr. Anton; it controlled her when she decided to move there. It’s the _apex predator._ And if it’s the apex predator, then it knows what it’s doing. 

And it let the government men in for a reason.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When they get back to the house - a short walk, a ten minute walk, because Mrs. Wheeler’s car wouldn’t start - Max knows immediately that something is wrong. The lights are still on, casting a glow over the snowy driveway and into the woods beyond, but they don’t feel warm or welcoming. It’s like it was at the Byers’ old house, the trees rustling in the wind, the house sitting there like it was watching them.

“I’m not sure…” she starts, as Hopper opens the door. She follows them in anyway, the sting in her arm all but forgotten in her fear. 

Fear that’s justified, because the house is empty. 

They search all the rooms. But no one’s here. And Mrs. Byers’ car isn’t in the driveway anymore - and there’s no way all seven of them could fit in it. Which means-

“What if it got them?” Lucas whispers.

“No, no, no, it can’t- it can’t have, can it?” Mike’s voice is full of panic. Max feels the same panic rising up inside her. Where are they? _Where are they?_

“If the demogorgon got them, why isn’t Mrs. Byers’ car here?” Dustin says, with a voice that pleads for logic but there’s fear in it too. 

“The government men,” Mrs. Wheeler says, looking from Dustin to Hopper. “What if they’ve been here? What if they- what if they took them?” Her voice trembles as she says it. Idly, Max thinks she’s taken to all this rather well, considering the _Reagan Bush ‘84_ sign that was stubborn on her lawn back when Max first got involved in all this.

“Brenner,” Hopper whispers, passing a hand over his face. 

“Brenner defected though, right? Right?”

“If it’s not Brenner then it’s someone else. Either way, we can’t trust them. We have to find out where they are and get them back!” Mike has raised his voice, almost shouting, determined and defiant. Max just watches numbly. 

Hopper hesitates for a moment. Then he goes to the phone. He dials a number and waits - and waits, and waits. There’s no answer. “Shit,” he says, slamming it back on the hook. “Murray called earlier, so I thought maybe-”

“We’re sitting ducks here,” Max says quietly. They all turn to look at her. “Whatever happened to the others- we have to get out.”

“The perimeter,” Lucas says. “If we leave the perimeter, then maybe the demogorgon can’t follow.”

“And we can use the phone.”

Hopper exhales slowly. “Okay. But each of you grab a weapon. In case we get separated again. _Only_ if we get separated again do you use them, okay?”

Max swallows, and they nod. Then she follows them out to the shed. There’s not much to choose from: an axe, two shovels, a baseball bat that looks like it’s seen better days. Lucas sticks with his wrist rocket. Max grabs the axe. 

They raid the house for flashlights, supplies, extra layers against the frigid air. There’s a discussion about going back for the car but all six of them know instinctively that it won’t start, just like the phones won’t ring. This is a dead zone.

And then they start walking. It’s a long walk, about an hour, and they flinch at every sound, sure the demogorgon is coming back for them. But they have to get out. They have to get out of this town and hope that it’s safe on the other side. 

Max winds up walking next to Lucas. She casts furtive glances at him every so often, because she knows she has to talk to him. She owes him that. But she doesn’t know how to start.

Finally, he makes the decision for her. “What?” he says. He doesn’t sound annoyed.

“Nothing, I just-” She sighs. “I wish you’d told me you were moving.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You made it none of your business when you broke up with me.” Harsh, but maybe true.

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t-” She stares at the slush in the road. Her feet are freezing cold. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Yes, you were,” he says. She stops and frowns. “You were thinking, Max. You were thinking too much. You got in your head.”

She opens her mouth to protest but nothing comes out. Finally, “I- yeah. I guess I did. I was- I wasn’t thinking about you. Or us, really. I was thinking about Billy.”

“Billy?”

She nods tightly. “I didn’t mourn him like I should. I didn’t feel… anything, really. Not grief, not relief, just- nothing. And that’s what made me sad. Because I was- I felt wrong, for not feeling anything. Guilty. He died to save El and I couldn’t even-” She can’t look at him. Billy was horrible, absolutely horrible, especially to Lucas. “I felt like a piece of shit. So…”

“You were punishing yourself,” he says softly, like he’s realising something. “You thought you didn’t deserve to be happy.”

“And you- you made me happy, Lucas.” Her voice drops. “You still do.”

“I still do?” 

“Yeah. I- I don’t want you to leave. Please.” Her eyes are still on the ground - but then she feels a hand on her arm. She looks up. His gaze is soft, gentle, like he’s afraid of startling her. He folds her into a hug. He’s warm, warm against the freezing night air. She melts into it.

And then ahead-

“What the fuck?!”

Dustin, swearing loud. They break apart and jog to catch up with the rest of them. They’re standing in the middle of the road, staring up at the trees - and the sign among the trees. _Leaving Eaden._ The sign they’ve passed once already.

“We’ve been here before,” Hopper says quietly.

“We’re going in circles,” Mike says, his voice despairing. “How are we going in circles?”

Max scans the town line. It’s not even a line, not really. Marked by the sign only. The woods cold all around. But when she steps forward, and looks back - the sign isn’t there anymore. Instead she sees the last house they passed ten minutes ago. 

“What the fuck,” she whispers, chest stone cold. “This isn’t-“

“We can’t get out.” Lucas’ voice is full of dread.

Hopper, by contrast, sounds resigned. “It won’t let us leave.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

El’s been on her own for at least an hour when the power goes out.

The room they left her in is simple, simple but nice. A low couch, a table with a few magazines on it, which she flicks through and then discards. Beige painted walls and a vending machine. Her stomach is gnawing with hunger but she doesn’t have any change.

Papa brought her in here with a smile and a promise to fetch her soon - he said it like that, _“I promise_ ,” and it sounded weird coming out of his mouth but by that point she had no option but to believe him. And as soon as he left she tried the door, but it was locked. And in the corner, the right hand corner, a steady red light is gleaming like an eye. A camera.

The surroundings are different enough, but the truth is the same. A locked room, someone watching her at all times. She’s right back to where she started, only worse - no powers. Nothing to help her escape, or to keep Papa happy. 

But he said he can fix her.

So she sits, and she waits. She became very good at waiting as a kid - waiting for Papa, waiting for punishment, waiting for a meal or lights-out. She’s used to it. And that’s when the power goes out.

One second everything is lit bright, and the next it’s dark. She blinks rapidly, trying to get her eyes to adjust. The darkness is solid, impenetrable. The red light in the corner has gone out.

Her eyes won’t adjust. The black is complete, darker than night. She sits there frozen, afraid to move in case something is crawling out where she can’t see it, afraid to call out for help in case something hears her. The darkness is so total that it’s just like the void, the Inbetween, and as soon as she has that thought she knows instinctively that it’s right there waiting. Waiting for her.

Standing up and stepping out into the inky water feels strangely like coming home. She feels the emptiness stretching out around her, the gap between worlds. Like Mr. Clarke said - it’s the membrane between the world, her world, and the Upside Down. If she wanted she could reach out and _tear_ , just like she did with her fear when she first opened the gate-

But then again, she probably couldn’t. There are limits, still. She’s made it to the Inbetween but she’s not sure whatever’s left of her powers will go much beyond that.

“Sunflower… rainbow… three… four…”

She whirls around. In the distance - the far distance - she sees a glimmer of light. The voice, echoey and soft, her mother’s voice, is coming from there. She doesn’t hesitate. She runs towards it, feet splashing soundlessly over the surface. She’s desperate now; she calls out _“Mama!”_ but there’s no response. Only the same awful repetition, just like last time. Just like before.

When she reaches her she finds her in the rocking chair, sad and vacant-looking. When they were moving Joyce had sat her down and asked her if it was okay they were leaving her mother behind; El had nodded listlessly, her voice almost gone from disuse. She wouldn’t talk, and Mama can’t talk, and Becky betrayed her, so El didn’t say anything against it.

And her Mama hasn’t changed.

Despite herself, despite knowing it will end badly, she reaches out. She reaches out to touch her hand - but instead of her turning to smoke through her fingers the darkness melts away entirely. El’s eyes widen and she looks around, startled, at a bright, golden kitchen. Mama is here too, but she’s smiling, alert, without those empty, dead eyes. She’s sitting on the counter, hair long and blonde around her shoulders, swinging her legs and occasionally stirring a pot on the stove.

She’s pretty.

“Jane!” she calls suddenly. El startles. It takes her a second to realise that Jane is her name; but she’s not the one Mama is calling. Mama can’t even see her. 

And then-

She’s watching herself walk into the kitchen.

Not herself exactly. Her hair is longer, reaching her waist, and her bangs brush into her eyes. She’s carrying a book - El squints at the title and sees that it says _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , under _Shakespeare_ in big letters. “Hey, Mom,” Jane says, leaning back against the opposite counter. “Did you call me for dinner?”

“Yes, honey, I did, do you wanna set the table?”

Jane nods and puts the book down. She brushes past El on her way to a drawer - but she doesn’t even shiver. It’s like El’s not even here. 

“What are you reading?” Mama asks, peering at the book curiously.

“Shakespeare. It’s for school, the drama club wants to put on this play and I’m working backstage so I thought I should read it.”

“Any good?”

Jane nods vigorously. “Really good.” 

El bites her lip. They looked at a little bit of Shakespeare in English class a few weeks ago; she wasn’t able to make sense of any of it. Everyone laughed when Ms. Connor asked her to read and she got stuck on the second word. But here - wherever _here_ is - she’s not like that. She’s different.

Mama smiles. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. You should try Twelfth Night next, that was one of my favorites.”

“Do you have a copy?”

“No, but I think Dan does. I’ll ask him the next time he comes over. Is that alright?”

El watches her other self nod. “You know-” She shrugs shyly. “I like him.”

“You do?” Mama smiles genuinely. “Good. I do too.”

El senses what’s happening, from the all the daytime soap opera storylines embedded in her brain. Dan is Mama’s boyfriend; Mama wants to impress Jane; Jane is offering what they call an olive branch. The _normalcy_ of it makes her throat tighten. This is what she could have had, if Brenner hadn’t taken her: reading Shakespeare and being so close with her mother that her mother wouldn’t date someone without her approval.

She hates herself, suddenly. Hates her powers - powers that are now gone. Because if she didn’t have them in the first place she could have had this instead. 

And now she has neither. 

“Do you want me to boil the pasta?” Jane asks.

Mama responds, but she’s not looking at Jane. She’s looking at El. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’ll do it.”

And then the kitchen retreats away from her so fast she feels dizzy, reaching out for a Mama that isn’t her Mama and a Jane that isn’t El-

She’s left alone in the dark again. A stray tear slips down her cheek and she doesn’t brush it away, just lets it fall. She misses Mama - not her as she is now, a husk of herself in a rocking chair, but as she was in the other world, long-haired and bright eyed, stirring sauce for dinner. 

But she can’t ever have that Mama, she knows this now. Some things can never be undone. And as she thinks this, she also thinks of Joyce, Joyce who drove off into the evening in search of answers. Did Papa get to her too? she wonders, and as soon as she wonders it she hears Joyce’s voice echoing over the water.

“...talk to my kids, Jesus, none of this is _okay_ , you fucked this up and now we’re _all_ in danger because _it wants us here_ , what part of that don’t you understand…”

She’s standing with her arms crossed, dressed in white scrubs like the men who brought El’s food when she was growing up were. Her hair is loose, tangled, thrown back over her shoulders, and her nose is bleeding again. But this isn’t what makes El’s chest constrict. 

There’s a cloud of _something_ hanging around her. 

El doesn’t know what it is, exactly. It’s not something she’s felt before. But it’s dark, and _hungry_ , and it’s focusing in on Joyce like a predator on prey. El knows about predators. And she knows that this is something bad. _The Beholder_ , isn’t that what the others called it?

And for some reason, it wants Joyce.

She takes a deep breath and tears herself away. She has to see the others; she has to know what’s happened to them before she can do anything else. So she concentrates on Hopper’s face in her mind, hollower now, grayer, focuses on it until the black bleeds away and he’s standing before her. 

“So we go back to the house,” he says, to someone she can’t see. “We go back to the house, to shelter from the demogorgon.” 

“But then we’re just sitting ducks!” And that’s Mike’s voice. She turns to see him holding a shovel, gesturing wildly. “We have to figure out some way to get out, to get to El-”

“Do you have any ideas? Because right now, we got nothing.” Max sounds scared, behind the matter-of-fact veil. El frowns.

“We go back to the house, where it’s safe, and we figure out what to do.”

“But that’s what the Beholder wants! It wants us stuck in this town, that’s why it’s not letting us leave-”

El’s stomach drops to her toes. Papa didn’t get them, okay, but they’re stuck in the town? At the mercy of the Beholder? Where it can do anything to them- play sick little games with their minds-

She can’t sit here in this room while they’re out there, in danger. She can’t. It would be selfish. Waiting here for Papa to fix her. She clenches her fist and closes her eyes, and when she opens them she’s sitting on the couch in the dark room again. Her eyes have adjusted now, though. She can faintly make out the edges of the furniture, the dim crack of light under the door. She doesn’t have her powers - but maybe she can escape without them.

She stands and grabs the lamp on the table in the corner, unplugging it and dumping the lampshade on the floor. She guesses they weren’t expecting her to put up a fight; maybe they thought she’d be weak and helpless without her powers to assist her. But they’re wrong. She slips into position next to the door, so when it swings open she’ll be hidden. And then she waits, gripping the lamp pedestal as tight as she can.

She waits, and then the power comes back on and she blinks in the sudden light as the door opens and she has to ready herself.

It’s just one man, in white scrubs, holding a tray of food. For a second she’s a child again, locked in a room with shaven hair. But she’s not that child, not anymore, and she can still defend herself.

She leaps out from behind the door and swings the lamp at him. It collides with his head - he crumples to the floor. The tray clatters as it falls, gravy spilling everywhere. Idly she thinks of the cafeteria, Darren’s leg sending her flying. It feels a world away. She grabs the keycard from the front of his shirt and runs out the door, slamming it and breathing hard as she picks a direction at random and hurries down the corridor.

She has to pray she won’t be caught. If she’s caught-

She refuses to be caught.

After a while it’s like her feet are moving without thought; she follows them where they’re taking her, because she knows to trust her instincts. And sure enough it’s only a few corridors down that she feels the urge to stop: she does, and peers into the room in front of her. It’s bare and cold, and as she looks into it she gets an awful feeling of deja-vu.

Because they’re not in Hawkins, but everything else is the same.

Will sitting at a table with a machine next to him, the one that draws scribbles according to the weird tangle of wires they put on your head. The room in front of it, with the glass for observation. It’s empty, at least. El swallows down her fear, the memories that are threatening to drown her, and swipes the keycard over the lock. For a painful second nothing happens, but then it buzzes green and she rushes into the room.

“Will,” she says. 

He looks at her warily. “You went with Brenner,” he says. 

She swallows. “I did. I thought- if he fixed me- then I could help. I could save everyone. But that’s not what he wants. And we have to save Mike, and Hopper and Max and Lucas and Mike’s mom.”

His eyes widen. “What?”

“They’re trapped in the town. Can you use your powers, to get them out?”

“I don’t-” He bites his lip. “What if something goes wrong? What if we bring something with us again, like we did with the demogorgon?”

She holds his gaze. “We have to try.”

After a second he nods, and takes her hand. They close their eyes.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When Owens meets his eyes and nods at him, Murray understands that it’s time to get going. He wants to stay here and help Joyce, really he does. But all this supernatural stuff isn’t exactly in his ballpark. He has a rather different skillset - namely exposing corruption, taking down shady government agencies, speaking Russian. All this is beyond his reach. Joyce seizing on the floor of the gas station- picking her up, carrying her to the van as the blood dripped from her face and Owens floored it to the hospital- not knowing what to do, only hoping and praying that she’d live- that she’d be alright-

For all his years on this earth, ageless eldritch beings that can mess with your head are something else entirely.

He hates the idea. It makes his skin crawl. The one thing he can trust in this world is his instincts, his perceptions, when the rest of the world is telling him he’s wrong; it got him fired from his job as an investigative reporter, yes, but they had a rather uncreative approach to _facts_. He’s always been keenly aware of the shady shit going on beneath the surface even when people try to gaslight him into thinking otherwise - so to think there’s _something_ out there that could take that away from him-

There’s a reason he went with Owens and left Joyce at the hospital. 

So yeah, he’s gonna stick with what he knows.

He manages to snatch a moment to talk to her, when they’re walking down the hallway to the room where they put the teenager, the ten year old, and the schoolteacher. (Jesus.) “Joyce-” he starts, and she glares at him.

“What?”

“Listen- just listen. I’m sorry, okay? But there are-” he lowers his voice, “there are other things going on. Owens and I- we’re working on something. We’re gonna get you and your delightful children out of this.”

She narrows her eyes. That streak of gray in her hair - it’s sinister, because it wasn’t there before, but also it suits her. “How?”

“Just trust me,” he says, even though he knows she probably won’t. “Focus on the world-ending eldritch being and I’ll cover the rest, okay?”

She clenches her jaw, clearly wanting to say more, but they’ve stopped walking and Leroy has turned back towards them. “Okay,” she hisses.

Murray smiles at Leroy politely, more than a little sarcastically. “Do you have a bathroom anywhere in this evil labyrinth of yours?” 

Leroy scowls. “Two hallways down, on the right. Don’t try any other doors. They’re all alarmed.”

Murray raises an eyebrow. He says that, but Murray doesn’t believe it. Power outages, like the one that happened only ten minutes ago, are very good for knocking out security systems. But he’s not here to snoop into each horrific room. He needs to get out instead.

So he walks away, and as soon as he’s out of sight he starts to run. 

Amazingly, he makes it to the parking lot unscathed. He gets in his van, waves the pass Owens gave him at the guy on the gate, grips the wheel with white knuckles as the gate opens achingly slowly. But it does open, and they do let him drive away. He was more than a little scared that they wouldn’t.

He glances over at the mapbook, open on the passenger seat. The motel isn’t far away - the place where his source is staying. Hiding, really. Not that the DoE would think to look for him. He’s an irrelevancy to them, nothing more - useful while it lasted, easy to discard. Murray cracks a wry grin to himself. That’s their greatest weakness, he knows. Discarding things. A stray piece of paperwork, or a stray person dissatisfied by the way they were cast off.

Usually they’ll send someone to _finish the job_. But, naively, this time they assumed a non-disclosure would be enough.

He looks in the wing mirror and notes with a little concern that there’s an unmarked black sedan on his tail. It wouldn’t be a cause for alarm, not usually, but it’s three am and there are no other cars on the road.

He takes the next left turning, crossing his fingers. The sedan follows him. 

Great, so he’s got a tail. He clenches his jaw. Fine. That’s how they wanna play it? He can deal with that. He’s good at evading. It’s easier when there are other cars on the road, but he can manage. 

The road ahead twists and winds through the trees. He speeds up, thinking maybe to get ahead then double back. The sedan matches his pace. He rolls his eyes - and then spots a sign, glinting in the dark. A tiny town, only a couple of streets and a grocery store, soon follows - but this is it, his opportunity. He floors it down the main drag and just as quickly turns right - and then immediately left, sending the van jolting and rolling down a bare snowy field. His teeth knock together as it bounces over a ditch and then he pulls it left again, up another slope, just in time to avoid rolling straight into the frozen lake at the bottom.

His tail isn’t so lucky. 

The sedan skids straight out onto the ice. Its momentum carries it into the middle of the lake; Murray watches the driver scramble to get out as there’s a sickening _crack_ and the car begins to sink. And then he stops watching, because it’s of no interest to him whether the guy survives or not. He’s lost his car: that’s what matters. 

Murray drives the van back up the slope, cursing at every wobble of the shitty suspension, and makes it back onto the road. Granted, it was a little less subtle than his usual methods, but it did the job, didn’t it?

He arrives at the motel less than ten minutes later. He parks the van neatly - no need to call attention to it - and hurries up the steps. He knocks rapidly on the door. There’s no answer. “It’s me,” he hisses, knocking again. And then the door opens to reveal-

“Nancy Wheeler,” he says, managing to inject a sneer into his tone through his confusion. What the hell is she doing here? He peers past her into the room. Jonathan is standing up, facing the door with his fists clenched. Steve Harrington is slumped in an armchair, and by the window is his source. 

John Harrington.

“What are you doing here?” she asks incredulously. He brushes past her on his way in. 

“John,” he says grandly, “mind telling me what this lovely brood is doing here?” 

Harrington frowns at him. “I don’t-”

But Murray has stopped paying attention. He’s looking at Steve, whose gaze is fixed on nothing, blank, dead-eyed. Murray wasn’t there when Joyce’s ex-husband became a corpse before their eyes but he thinks he’d know it when he sees it - and he’s seeing it.

“Harrington Junior,” he says.

“What?” Nancy asks, glaring at him.

“There’s something wrong with him. Look.”

The four of them look. Jonathan snaps his fingers in front of Steve’s face; Steve doesn’t respond. “It’s another vision,” Jonathan whispers.

“Well we better work out a way to snap him out of it or else things are about to get really nasty _really_ quickly,” Murray says sharply.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Byers senior turned out to be a corpse on strings, so…”

“What?” Jonathan’s voice is little more than a whisper. 

Murray feels a rare sting of regret for his callousness, but business is more pressing than the kid’s daddy issues. “The- whatever you call it, the Beholder, it took him over. And if we’re not careful, it’s gonna take over darling Steve here too.”

“So what do we do?” Nancy says, determined as ever. She reminds him of himself.

He stares at Steve. He never got this far - none of them ever got this far. He doesn’t know. “I don’t know.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“So…”

“The Mind Flayer has flayed the Beholder.”

“And this is the next phase of its master plan.”

“Closing the gate didn’t really work, because it still managed to flay the Beholder-”

“Because of the gate in Russia.” Joyce glances at Owens as he speaks. He has his arms folded over his chest, his brow furrowed in thought. “We questioned the Soviet defector. They had a gate in July; it broke down in August. You said that closing the gate cuts the brain off from the body? Well, if there was another gate open at the time…”

“But the fleshy Mind Flayer thing- it died.” Erica is frowning; Joyce watches her carefully. She’s so young. Too young to be involved in this, far too young. But then again, is there ever a right age?

“It pretended,” Robin says. “It must have. This is its- its master plan. We’ve been thinking of things in terms of the DnD monster manual, right? But what if that’s all wrong. What if instead of _monsters_ , the Beholder and the Mind Flayer, they’re-”

“Dungeon masters,” Scott says slowly. “They control the board.”

Joyce’s heart sinks. But, of course, he’s right. The whole town subject to them-

Then she frowns. “But how did the Russians build a gate in Russia? Alexei said-“ she winces “-that they couldn’t, that they could only build one in Hawkins because this was where it had happened before.”

Owens shakes his head. “Ilya told us that-“

“Once one gate was open, it was easy to create another one.”

She freezes, and slowly turns around. Brenner is standing in the doorway, face as cold and sneering as before, though there’s a ropey scar creeping up his neck. She’s never hated anyone as much as she hates him. And she still hasn’t seen her children. She doesn’t trust Owens’ assurances that they’re safe.

“I knew your Alexei. He was a good scientist.”

“Yeah, until your side murdered him.”

“Not my side anymore,” Brenner says smoothly, like that makes it any better. Like she cares whether they’re American or Russian. Their bullets are the same, and their mistakes.

“But if the gate’s now closed…” Robin is frowning. “How is the Beholder still flayed?”

“It exists out of time and place, right? Stuff like the Upside Down, and the boundaries of the worlds, they don’t matter to it. So as long as the Mind Flayer is still inside the Beholder…”

“It can still access the Upside Down.”

Joyce frowns again. “But why hasn’t it done anything until this last week? The cave… and the visions…”

“Will’s powers,” Erica says, and out of the corner of her eye Joyce sees Brenner get a hell of a lot more interested. _Get the fuck away from my son_ , she wants to say. _You already hurt my daughter enough._ But she doesn’t, not now. Not yet. “Like with the Commies and the key last year when they came to Hawkins - what if he made the boundary thinner?”

“Like the shred,” Joyce whispers. “The bit that we got out of Will- before-”

“So it flayed the Beholder last July and then when the second gate closed in August the bit that was still in the Beholder got left there, cut off. And then when Will started using his powers…”

“It got activated.” 

They all stare at each other. Agent Leroy looks alarmed for the first time; Brenner has crossed his arms. 

“And the demogorgon?” Owens asks, frowning. “How is that still alive with the gate closed?”

“I don’t think it’s flayed,” Joyce says quietly. “In Russia- it was just hunting. Just like it was hungry. Just like when Will went missing two years ago.”

“If the gate’s closed already, then how do we stop the Mind Flayer?” Erica has crossed her arms over her chest. “We need a plan.”

“It’s contained within the perimeter,” Brenner says smoothly. 

Leroy nods. “Yeah, it can be taken care of.”

“‘Taken care of’?” Joyce scoffs. “What are you gonna- you gonna drop a nuke on it? Is that what you’re gonna do? It’s not gonna _work._ ”

“And the others- they’re still in there,” Robin says, voice desperate.

“Listen. It’s in all our interests that this gets resolved. So how about we work together on this?” Owens’ tone is convincing. Joyce holds her breath as the three government men face each other. Idly, she wonders what Murray meant when he said he and Owens were working on something. She wonders whether it will work.

Finally, Brenner speaks. “What do you have in mind?”

She takes a deep breath. “I want to see my children.”

“That’s not-”

“No, I want to see them.”

“They’re probably the only ones who can fix this,” Robin says quietly, persuasively. And that settles it. The seven of them head off down the hallway, Robin dragging the stand of the IV with her. They find Will in a small room with a glass window - and El with him.

“Eleven-” Brenner starts, clearly not expecting to see her, but she shakes her head tightly.

“I’m not working for you, Papa. Not anymore.”

Joyce feels a rush of pride before she hurries towards them. “The Mind Flayer, it’s-”

“Linked to the Beholder. We know,” Will says.

“It’s flayed,” Robin adds, from across the room. The kids’ eyes widen. 

“Even more reason to get the others out of the town,” Will says, firmly, like his resolve has toughened. El nods beside him, and they look more like twins than ever. Joyce’s heart breaks for them, for everything they’ve done, everything they still have to do. If she can lighten that load, even slightly-

“You’re doing this in the- in the void? Like before, when you looked for Hopper?” They nod. “I’m coming with you.”

“Mom-”

“It’s tied to me somehow, isn’t it?” She tries not to react to her words as she says them. It’s something she’s suspected all along, for longer than just this week. Everything with Will, everything that happened- Bob, Hopper- and earlier than that, her mom, her brother, Lonnie- 

She’s felt cursed for a very long time. Only now she has a name for it. 

“If we go in there together-” she takes a deep breath “-maybe we can work out how to stop it.”

A moment, then, “Okay.” El looks at her with wide, trusting eyes - so different to the way she looks at Brenner. But that’s the way she used to look at him, Joyce remembers. When she was a child who called him ‘Papa.’ Joyce casts a poisonous glance back at Brenner. But this isn’t the moment; one demon at a time.

They’re taken to a larger room. Someone brings in a TV, switched to static. And then they sit down together, the three of them, and join hands. 

And close their eyes.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

The clocks have stopped, so Hopper has no way of knowing what time it is. It’s still dark out, at least, so he knows it hasn’t been too long. He takes another swig of whiskey - straight from the bottle - and passes it over to Karen, who grimaces as she tastes it. The two of them are sat in Joyce’s kitchen, half an eye kept on the four kids sat in the living room, the hopelessness of their situation weighing on them all like a cloud.

They’ve divided up the remaining food in the house. Hopper’s rationed some of it back, just in case, but they haven’t eaten in god knows how long and none of them are hungry. He tries not to freak out about that. The power’s gone out, leaving them sitting in the flickering light of the candles Hopper found in a box under a bed.

“So you were in Russia?” Karen asks quietly, curiosity in her eyes. 

He looks at her. “Yes. I was.”

She shakes her head. “What was that- what was that _like?”_

Does he want to tell her? Karen Wheeler, PTA mom, gossip, woman who wouldn’t know hardship if it hit her in the face? She and Joyce are different. So different. But Joyce isn’t here, and he kind of wants to talk to someone. “Honestly? Goddamn awful.” She passes back the bottle; he takes another long sip. “You know what the worst thing is? No one ever tells you what the worst thing is. It’s not the beatings, or all the work they make you do, or how cold it is all the goddamn time. It’s the isolation. Right at the beginning they left me in that cell for days - weeks maybe, I don’t know. And when you start hallucinating…”

He clears his throat and drinks again. She’s looking at him gently, carefully. She’s not so bad, is Karen Wheeler. Not really. He knew her better when they were kids. She’s two years older than him, daughter of one of the town’s better-to-do families. When they moved back to Hawkins from DC, he and his dad, in 1961, they moved onto the same street as the Dawsons. Karen went to boarding school, but he saw some of her in the vacations. Her parents - old money, losing money - had a sneering sort of air, but Karen was never like that. 

“Bet you didn’t think you’d be having a drink with a dead man and hiding from a demogorgon this time last week, huh.”

She offers a thin smile. “This time last week my biggest worries were Mike skipping school and whether I’d be kicked off the PTA committee for divorcing Ted.”

“You’re divorcing him?” He raises his eyebrows. Damn, that’s new. 

“I guess Joyce inspired me,” she says, and then looks away. There’s something weird in her face. “Have you- has the- the Beholder... shown you anything?”

He shakes his head slowly. “You?”

She bites her lip and nods. “It was- it was strange. I don’t- it was a world where I went to college, instead of marrying Ted. I went to Harvard.”

“Harvard?” He tries not to sound too surprised, and he’s pretty sure he fails, because she gives him a faint smile.

“Yes, Harvard, I know. Turns out I could have- well. Turns out I could have been a lot of things if I hadn’t married Ted.” There’s a far off look in her eyes. “Joyce and I-” She breaks off suddenly, looking at him, almost startled, like she’d forgotten who she was talking to. She shakes her head. “Sorry, I… I know you and Joyce…”

He huffs out a laugh. “Don’t be. It’s…” He thinks of everything that happened last summer, the way she glared at him and the way she grabbed his hand. “It’s complicated. I don’t- it’s complicated. I got a lot of things to make up for.”

“Hey,” Karen says. “I know she missed you. A lot, actually. That counts for something, right?”

He sighs. It’s not as simple as that. None of it is as simple as that. And he still can’t shower with the door closed.

“I’m gonna-”

The lights flicker. In the dark it’s almost blinding, the quick flash before they go dead again. Hopper grabs the Kalashnikov and stands up, goes into the living room.

“Get behind me,” he orders, because he knows what this is. They all do. They’ve grabbed their makeshift weapons, standing up, leaving uneaten sandwiches discarded on the floor. The lights flicker once again and Karen lets out a gasp-

And then there’s a sound from the roof.

The _roof._ Something thuds on it, loud. The ceiling trembles. The lamp, unlit, clinks as it swings from side to side: _clinkclink clink clink._

_Clink._

_Clink._

And then silence. 

They hardly dare to breathe for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. Any second now it will burst through- any second it will- they’ll-

Silence.

More silence.

He breathes out slowly. Maybe-

And then there’s an almighty crash as the ceiling folds in and something cruel and snarling bursts out in a cloud of dust and rubble. Hopper is knocked back; the others are too. They scatter in different directions as the demogorgon swings around and roars at him. He unleashes four rounds into its hide, but they just bounce off the leathery skin. So he has to duck as it leaps for him, its claws grazing his back and sending a lance of pain up his spine, and he coughs and splutters in the rubble of the ruined ceiling. It snarls and turns to spring for him again and before he can think he dives behind the couch. The demogorgon collides with it and pushes it into him, knocking the air out of his lungs. He tenses his muscles. The beast claws at the couch but it can’t reach him from there; he’s safe, unless it crushes him.

He fumbles for the gun. It’s trapped under his back but slowly, achingly slowly, he manages to work it free. Then he aims right for the demogorgon’s dripping bloody mouth and fires.

It screams. The weight on the couch is lifted; a second later the lights flicker and the room is silent.

Slowly, he crawls out from under the couch. The room is empty; everyone is gone. He hopes they had the sense to run while the beast was distracted. He hopes it didn’t get them instead.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Jonathan presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and takes a deep breath. The cold is icy, numbing, so cold it hurts to breathe, but it grounds him. He needs grounding.

Murray, Nancy, and Steve’s dad are still inside, still trying to wake Steve up out of that _vision._ There isn’t anything Jonathan could be doing to help - he’d just get in the way - so he’s retreated out here. Here, where the sky is beginning to lighten into pale, murky dawn, and absent flakes of snow are still drifting down around him. He’s sitting on the steps above the parking lot.

_Byers senior turned out to be a corpse on strings, so…_

He doesn’t _like_ his dad. That’s never been in question - not since he was maybe ten. His dad taking him out, putting a gun in his hand, making him shoot a rabbit wasn’t even the last straw, not really. Just one in a long line of many. There were worse things before that and since. 

If Lonnie had died separately to all this - quietly, in that shitty little house of his on the outskirts of Indianapolis, something they found out in a letter or a brief, terse phone call - then maybe it would be okay. He’s a bad chapter in their lives, now forever closed. But like this…

This will crush Will the most, he knows. His mom- he doesn’t know what she’ll think. Maybe this was that truth that she was searching for earlier - the truth that Lonnie isn’t Lonnie at all, just a _thing_ , a puppet of the thing that’s already in all their heads. But Will still liked Lonnie, just a little bit. Wanted whatever affection the asshole was willing to give him, which wasn’t much. Jonathan still remembers the time Will came home in tears because Lonnie said _You’ve done nothing to make me want to be your father._

But Lonnie was _Lonnie_. Deadbeat asshole who drank too much and slept with girls fresh out of high school and occasionally grabbed their mom’s wrists too hard - but not a monster. Not in the literal sense. Whatever else he was he was always the most painfully normal of their problems.

But not anymore.

Jonathan huffs out a sigh and watches his breath mist in the freezing air. Each year things get worse. A week ago he was arguing with his mother about whether he’d go to college or not; as it stands right now, he might not even make it to next week.

This is what he was talking about. She wants him to be normal, to go to college and get a degree and live in an apartment, but that’s not in the cards for him. For any of them. The second he leaves - if he even survives to get there - some other shit will go wrong and he won’t be there to protect them. 

Bad enough that he left the house yesterday. It was only supposed to be an hour or two, for Steve to call his dad, but now no one will answer the phone and they can’t find the town and-

Everything goes wrong when he’s not there. Will went missing; they got trapped in the Lab; the Mind Flayer returned and Jonathan didn’t know about it until the morning. He’s not leaving again. The second he’s back with Will and his mom he’s not leaving their sides again. They need him, he knows that - not only in this but always. He sees it in the way she looks at him, even though she denies it. 

He doesn’t believe all of that ‘man of the house’ crap that Lonnie was spouting - but he does believe that they wouldn’t make it without him. 

“Jonathan!” He turns to see Nancy leaning over the railing, hair swinging. “Steve’s okay.”

He exhales. That’s something, at least. He gets to his feet, wincing as his stiff muscles stretch out, and follows her inside. Steve is sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against the chair, white as a sheet. “...did you see?” Murray is asking sharply, pacing around the admittedly small space.

“I told you, the same as before. I’m having dinner with-” He glances at his dad, who’s standing by the window with his arms crossed. “It’s the same as before.”

“Steven-”

“Shut up, dad. You’re the reason we’re in this mess.”

“Well, actually-” Murray says.

“What?” Nancy snaps, whirling to glare at him. Jonathan resists the urge to step between them. 

“I’m not just here for funsies, you know. Harrington senior here is my source.”

All three of them frown. “Your source? For what?”

“For going some way to making up for the shit I allowed to happen,” Steve’s dad says, voice weary. He rubs a hand over his face. Stubble is growing in; he looks less composed than ever. “Bauman and I are working on an exposée.”

There’s a long silence. Steve gets to his feet, wobbling a little. “You-”

“Harrington senior, why don’t you go outside.” Murray’s voice is sharp. Steve’s dad splutters a protest but Murray insists; the rest of them watch him leave, incredulous. “Well, as much as I’d like you two to have a lovely little soap opera tete-a-tete right now, this explanation will go much more smoothly if you two aren’t having your moment in the middle of it. Save the melodrama for later, yes?”

Steve glares at him. Jonathan kind of sees his point.

“Harrington got involved with the DoE in 1960. Hawkins National Lab was his pet project - well, his and Brenner’s. That’s why your father, an up and coming businessman at the age of 25, settled in what the French might call _buttfuck nowhere_. He wound up focusing on residential projects after that, until 1974, when the Lab up here was commissioned. Harrington’s property company brokered the deal. He’s been working with them on and off ever since, setting up evil little blacksites everywhere. And in 1983, I learned, he helped Brenner escape from the DoE and defect to Russia.”

_“What?”_

“Yes, Harrington senior’s a traitor, it doesn’t take much these days, Owens and I illegally wiretapped several agents’ phonecalls so I guess we’re traitors too…”

Nancy shakes her head. “So how did he wind up working with you?”

“I connected the dots to him right about the time I connected the dots about Jim in Russia. The Russia connection was too strong to ignore; I knew there had to be more going on, with Brenner involved. So right about the time Owens thought he was _so_ clever because he tapped my phone, even though I _let_ him do it, I also reached out to Harrington senior and none too gently suggested that the tides were turning and it might be in his best interest to help. I pointed to our work on Hawkins Lab as an example,” he adds, nodding to Jonathan and Nancy with something almost like pride. 

“What’s he been doing for you, then?”

“Going through old files, copying them, faxing them. Remember that legal trouble?” He directs this to Steve, who nods vaguely. “That was just a cover for getting all the files together.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” Steve says, apparently finally having found his voice, which comes out hoarse. “I could’ve helped. We could’ve helped.”

Murray shrugs. “He didn’t want you involved. Don’t ask me why. Maybe a little bit of fatherly affection.”

Steve snorts. Jonathan wants to tell him to be less obvious about it - but then again, Murray can sniff out your issues from a mile off. No doubt there’s some psychoanalysis coming anyway. “I doubt that,” Steve says in a low tone, but he’s looking into the middle distance with a strange expression on his face. For a second Jonathan is afraid he’s slipped into the vision again, but then he looks up. “You said they’ve got everyone at the compound?”

“Less than an hour away,” Murray confirms. “They have blacksites everywhere. Thanks to your darling father. It’s not everyone, though. Jim and some of the children are still in the town.”

They all look at each other. Will and El and his mom are safe, that’s what makes Jonathan breathe a sigh of relief. But if the others are stuck in the town…

“Well, let’s do it,” Steve says, determination in his voice. 

Suddenly, Jonathan gets it. There’s not much they can do about the town, not now, not from here. But maybe they can help the ones stuck in the government compound. Maybe they can save El - and Will now, since he has powers - from an awful future, poked and prodded. He crosses his arms and looks at Murray. “What’s your plan?”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When Joyce opens her eyes she’s in a long brown hallway, lit with the vestiges of sunny summer afternoon. There’s music playing faintly in the background - Roy Orbison, she thinks. Singing about dreams and the sandman. It’s bizarrely appropriate.

She recognises this hallway. It’s from one of her happier memories - so when Will and El step out behind her, she lets them come. Lets them walk along ahead of her, down to the end of the corridor where she knows what they’ll find. 

Her younger self, seventeen, sprawled on the floor with a cigarette in her hand and her head resting on Hopper’s knee. She was right about Roy Orbison - his ‘63 album, old by then, is spinning slowly on the record player in the corner. Hopper is smoking too, his other hand pushing his hair back in a manner she remembers he thought _rakish._ And there are two other people in the room - Cindy, a sweet girl with ginger hair who Joyce thinks moved to Florida, and Karen. Karen’s hair is light brown, carefully styled in the fashion of the time. Her dress is yellow check.

“...isn’t it so nice? I can’t wait to marry him. We’re thinking about a December wedding… you know, the snow, it would be so pretty…”

Joyce watches her younger self look at Hopper and roll her eyes. Karen was nineteen at this point, she remembers. Already engaged. A family friend of Hopper’s, not of Joyce’s - different social circles, and all that. Joyce was only here because Hopper said Karen might help with their math homework.

“Is that Mike’s mom?” Will whispers, staring at the group on the floor. Joyce nods. What are they doing here? She doesn’t know. She guesses if they’re looking for Hopper and Karen, still stuck in the town… this is one of her few memories of them together…

Her eyes fall to her younger self again. She’s wearing shorts and Hopper’s jacket, which is huge on her. And then she lifts her cigarette to her lips again and the sleeve slips down, and Joyce starts to remember the sequence of things. Because there’s a bandage on her wrist. And when she remembers that, remembers why it’s there, still isn’t sure whether she did it accidentally or not, the four teenagers disappear and the hallway darkens and it’s four weeks earlier.

This is her fault. She thought of it. But she can’t stop it now. Will and El are looking around curiously and she feels her feet drawn on, down the hallway, unable to stop walking until she’s in the doorway of the bathroom looking at herself hunched on the floor by the sink with blood dripping down her arm and pooling on the tiles. She can’t help herself - she goes and kneels down in front of young Joyce, watches herself cry silently.

“What happened?” El asks quietly.

Joyce doesn’t take her eyes off her younger self as she answers. “I don’t remember, exactly. I think- my dad and my brother, they fought.” _Fought_ is an understatement. Her brother is somewhere in the house, she knows, because soon he’ll rush in here and find her bleeding and she’ll take one look at his bruised, puffed-up face and start screaming and she won’t stop until the hospital, where they will sedate her, and when she wakes they will examine her, and they will send her off to the psych ward. Her dad wasn’t violent often. But when he was…

She wants to hug her younger self. She wants to take her in her arms and tell her - _It won’t always be like this. It won’t always be this bad._ But that’s not true, not exactly. Her life hasn’t gotten any better - it’s probably gotten worse. But she’s better at dealing with it now.

“We should go,” she says, getting to her feet, even though she doesn’t want to. She wants to see her brother’s face, even if it might destroy her a second time. She never got to say goodbye to David, not really. She left him here with their father and if she hadn’t, maybe he wouldn’t have done what she half intended to do to herself right here. “This isn’t- we should go.”

Will and El, wide-eyed, nod. They leave the bathroom just as her brother comes running down the corridor, just as the light changes again and her younger self is ten walking down to the kitchen, down a slightly different corridor, one she’s seen in a dream.

This is the root of it all, she thinks. What last year they called _the_ _source._ This is where it came from. 

She watches herself approach her aunt. She watches her aunt hold out a hand, look at her, then look out of the window at the snowy Minnesota landscape outside. And then she suddenly knows, knows with absolute clarity, that if they see it - _it_ \- then they’ll be lost too.

“Close your eyes,” she says.

“What?”

“Close your eyes and turn around!” she shouts and they do it. She does too. But she feels it looking at her - _looking at her_ \- pressing on the inside of her skull-

It knows they’re here. In here, wherever _here_ is. Somehow it didn’t before; but this is its realm, crossing worlds, crossing time. Now it _sees_ them. 

She hears Will gasp beside her. “I _feel_ it,” he says. “It’s _him._ ”

She doesn’t have to look at him to know what he’s talking about. El, on her other side, is silent, but Joyce can sense her fear. And then the voice.

    you **shouldn’t ha** ve come here. 

It grates on her skull and she winces - and then El grabs both their hands and when she opens her eyes they’re not in her aunt’s tiny kitchen in Minnesota anymore. They’re in a green, humid jungle, the air thick with heat, insects buzzing around them.

The Beholder is gone - but not really. She can still sense it, hanging in the fabric of this world. 

“Mom, the Mind Flayer-” Will says seriously. “I think that maybe- in here- if we can find it- because the Beholder’s here, right? So the Mind Flayer is too. Maybe we can stop it.”

She stares at him. She wants that. She wants to stop it - but what will it cost? “First, let’s…” She trails off. She doesn’t know. “Where are we?” she asks, trying to get her breathing under control. 

“Vietnam,” El whispers. “I didn’t mean to- I just wanted to find Hopper-”

Of course. Joyce looks around at the trees, their leaves alien to her. This is a warzone, she remembers: “We should get out of-”

A sound behind them. She whips around, heart beginning to pound, even though she knows they can’t be seen by anyone here. Right. Right? A group of soldiers emerges from the treeline, American by the looks of their uniforms, carrying long, heavy guns. She takes a deep breath and pushes Will and El behind her, into the shade of the trees. 

For a moment nothing happens. Nothing at all. But their faces are curiously blank, and it makes her think of Lonnie, and the awful way his face melted into that of a corpse, and the voice he spoke in that wasn’t his. _You shouldn’t have come here._ Because this is its realm, isn’t it? They’re just visitors here. Interlopers. 

Enemies.

The soldiers look at her. 

you’re goingto **regr** et coming here, they say, in a voice that feels like something clawing its way between her ribs. They snarl at her - not human at all, she sees. Puppets of something far worse. And then they open fire.

For a second she feels nothing.

And then she looks down and sees blood blossoming like a bright red flower on the front of her clean white scrubs, and the pain hits a second later. 

_They fucking shot me ohmygod I didn’t think they could do that-_

Her legs fold beneath her as her vision whites out with pain and she breathes in gasping breaths. “Mom!” Will’s voice sounds far off, distant. She feels him grabbing for her hand but she shakes him off.

“Go, get out of here,” she hisses. “Don’t-” She nearly chokes on the words through the pain. “Don’t let it find you. I’ll just go back to the world, it’s okay.”

They both look uncertain, from what she can see through the haze of agony. But she can feel in her gut that she’s right. She’ll close her eyes and open them and she’ll be back in that room with the static TV, whole, safe. Even if _safe_ feels like a distant memory with pain ripping its way through her abdomen.

“Don’t let it find you,” she says again. The last thing she sees before she opens her eyes is the steady trickle of blood from her son’s nose.

And then she jolts up in a white room with her own blood running down her face and her hands scrabble at her stomach but she’s fine, unhurt, whole. Will and El still have their eyes closed, still deep in the place where the boundaries of reality are thin. She takes a deep breath and looks up at Robin, at Scott, at Erica, at Brenner, at Owens, at Leroy. 

“What happened?” Leroy hisses.

“I died,” she says, almost to herself, almost wondrously. She _died._

And yet she’s still here.

“You need to let me go in there,” she says quietly. “Into the town.” The realisation is a solid stone in her chest. She can’t go back into the Inbetween - and as much as it goes against her very grain, she knows that Will and El’s best chance is to stare there without her. They can try to find the root there; maybe she can still do something from here. 

Leroy and Brenner regard her, looking almost _bored._ Owens, by their sides, has his arms crossed over his chest and is grinding his teeth. “Into the quantum zone?”

Joyce nods. If they don’t let her- if they say no-

“The perimeter is expanding,” Brenner muses. “We do need to know what’s in there.”

She knows what’s in there. It’s two adults and four children; it’s the town she called home for seven months, the town that isn’t real at all. But if it takes his scientific curiosity to get her in there- “So you’ll let me go?”

“‘Let you’? This isn’t a prison, Ms. Horowitz.” Leroy’s tone is faintly amused; she glares at him. He can say that all he likes but she knows he wouldn’t let her leave, not if he didn’t want her to. Any of them. They’re prisoners whether they like it or not.

“You died?” Erica’s voice is small. “How does that- what-”

Joyce’s hand ghosts over her midriff. There’s still an echo of the pain, a phantom of it, but she’s whole and unharmed. “Somehow- in there- it can hurt us.”

“So Will and El…”

She swallows hard. She hates to think of that, of leaving them in there hunted by the Beholder, because sure she woke up without a scratch but what if they _don’t_ , they get hurt and it _kills_ them-

But Will thinks they can stop it. And maybe, finally, after everything, she has to trust them. She has to let them do what they need to do. They all have their parts to play, after all - if she learnt anything from what the Beholder showed her, she learnt that much.

“Let them stay in there,” she says. “I think they can stop it. And if you let me go into the town, maybe I can help them from there.”

A silence. The government men look at each other for a moment; she can almost read the silent words on Brenner’s lips. _She’s no loss of ours. Will and Eleven are the assets. Let her do what she likes._

It makes her burn with rage, but there’s nothing she can do. When they’ve finished with the Beholder, she’ll come back and she’ll deal with him.

“Okay,” Leroy says finally. “You can enter the quantum zone.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Murray doesn’t have much of a plan. That’s the worst part. They listen to him talk about recordings and _The New York Times_ and censorship and spying for long enough that Steve completely loses track of what he’s saying; instead he looks at Jonathan, who’s narrowed his eyes, and then Nancy, who’s nodding along vaguely, looking slightly confused. _This isn’t a plan._

It’s Nancy who finally cuts in. “Okay, but we need to get the others out as soon as possible. Like, in the next twenty-four hours.”

“With all due respect, Ms. Wheeler, I haven’t got my own private army. If you _want_ to go in there alone and die, then by all means, be my guest-”

“She won’t be going alone,” Steve says sharply, crossing his arms. 

Instead of offence, what comes onto Murray’s face is something more like a smirk. “Oh, Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve. I’d expect nothing less.”

Steve scowls. “What the hell do you know about me, man?”

“More than you think. It was only a year and three months ago, after all, that dear Nancy and Jonathan came to visit me and solve all their myriad problems…”

“Me being one of them,” he says dryly, ignoring the way both Nancy and Jonathan huff out a protest. “So? What do you think you know?”

Murray cracks a smile and leans forward, clasping his hands between his knees. “I know you’re a lonely, lonely kid. Clinging to the rungs of high school popularity because it made you feel worthwhile… Until Nancy. She made you feel just a little bit better about yourself. Absent dad, am I right? Of course I’m right, I know the guy. His paternal skills leave… something to be desired. But Nancy… oh, she worked for a while. But then she stopped doing what you wanted. She stopped being the Nancy you signed up for, the Nancy you took to parties as a sort of trophy, despite your waning popularity in the wake of… oh, I don’t know, nightmares about a monster you faced in October ‘83, causing sleep deprivation, slacking in classes, bad grades, bad performance in sports, not getting into college…”

Steve listens to him talk in silence. His jaw is tense, his hands clammy. How dare he- 

But is he not right?

The nightmares that kept him up all night every night, left him sleeping with the light on, left him smoking a joint on the roof instead of lying in bed because then maybe he could quiet the rushing of his thoughts. He knew Nancy was going through the same; he knew Jonathan was probably going through the same. But he never thought to ask. To share. 

They dealt with it in their own ways, and ultimately it broke them. And yeah, maybe what he wanted from Nancy back then wasn’t something she could or would give him. But he’s learnt since then. Robin, if no one else, has taught him that just because you think your life _should_ look like something doesn’t mean it _will_ \- nor does it mean you’re right to think that. If he had the chance to do it all over-

But that’s exactly what’s being offered, isn’t it? The chance to fix his mistakes. To start again with a different roll of the dice, a better one. (Great, he’s even making DnD references in his head now.)

“...and now you’re here, still after that fatherly affection, maybe relieved that you can finally share what you’ve been through, maybe finally he’ll _understand_ …”

Before he can say anything in response to Murray’s snide voice, the motel room is melting away again and he’s sitting at the dinner table in his house in Hawkins with Nancy on his left and his parents opposite them; his dad is smiling, _smiling_ , drinking a glass of wine, talking about the future. “...you go off to college, you know, don’t forget your old man. Come visit at least once.”

And Nancy chimes in, beautifully, “Of course he has to come visit. I’ll force him. He’s leaving me here all on my lonesome, isn’t he?”

He smiles at her, leans over to kiss her on the cheek. “Of course I’ll come visit. Nothing like a home cooked meal, huh?”

His mother laughs, blushing, bashful. Her hair is long; she looks happy and healthy. Not clutching her wine glass like it’s all that’s anchoring her to the world. “Well, you’re always welcome to come home.”

Suddenly Steve remembers where he really is, who he really is. _You’re always welcome to come home._ There’s a certain irony in that. He’s pretty sure he wasn’t even welcome to come home from the hospital the day he was born. 

This is a world where he doesn’t need his father to know what he’s been through, to understand, because they already understand each other. The hidden parts of the world are still just that - hidden. And he doesn’t have to worry about his dad’s dubious morality because he was never morally dubious in the first place.

But he’s different. The Steve who sits at his parents’ dinner table and smiles is not the Steve who drove with Nancy all the way to Minnesota on little more than a hunch. He’s different, and so is Nancy. Because the Nancy here - she’s still performing a role. She sits by his side and smiles politely and laughs at his father’s jokes and that’s exactly the role she played for the weeks when they were trying to uncover his dad’s secret. It’s play-acting.

And this Nancy is easier, more comfortable for him. This whole life is more comfortable.

But it’s not _real._

And once upon a time that wouldn’t have mattered. But now it does. He’s changed and he’s not going to throw all that away for a life in which he didn’t _have_ to change. He’s done taking the easy way out. He’s done shaping Nancy into something she isn’t; shaping _himself_ into something he isn’t.

“No,” he says quietly. Three pairs of eyes snap to him, and it’s eerie. Frightening. But he can’t stop now, despite the deadness behind their expressions. It only makes the resolve grow. “No,” he says again, pushing his chair back. The plates and glasses rattle with his movement. “This isn’t real.”

“Steve-” his dad tries, sad, kind, pleading. He shakes his head.

    **steve.**

And that’s not his dad’s voice. That’s not _anyone’s_ voice. It’s twisted and ancient and _wrong_ , and it sends ice shooting down his spine, and he knows that the Beholder is _angry_ because Steve has rejected it, so he has to get out _now-_

“No!” he shouts. And then the sensation of falling overtakes him and the next thing he sees are Jonathan’s worried eyes above him as he blinks awake on the shitty motel carpet. “Hey, man,” he says, weakly. The ceiling is spinning.

“What happened? Did you see it again?”

He nods and slowly manages to sit up. Experimentally, he touches his head. There’s no throbbing, gnawing pulse inside it. It might be too good to be true, but- “The Beholder, I think- I think I got rid of it. I can’t feel it anymore.”

“What? How?”

“I just said… no. And it was- it was _angry_ , but it let me go.”

Nancy is frowning. He knows that look. God, he’d never have been happy with her as she was in that vision. Docile and polite. This is the _real_ Nancy. (Not his Nancy - she’s not anyone’s.) “There’s one thing we haven’t worked out,” she says. “Perspective. See, in the vision I had, I was watching myself, like I was outside my body, like I was somebody else. So was my mom, in her vision. But for Joyce, it was like she was herself.”

“And for me,” he says. 

Jonathan narrows his eyes. “So what does that mean?”

“Well- its grip on Joyce and Steve was the strongest, right? With me and my mom it was only a moment. And that’s probably because-”

“Because we wanted what it was offering more,” Steve finishes. Because he knows Nancy, and he knows that she’s not the type to take the easy way out. Neither is Joyce, he also knows, but she’s been through a lot these past years. She can be forgiven for wanting a break.

“Which means that somehow we can influence it. We can _change_ it,” Jonathan says, and there’s hope in his voice. “It isn’t all powerful. If we can influence what we see, if we can say _no_ , then-”

“Then it can be stopped.” 

“I’m impressed,” Murray says. 

Steve had almost forgotten he was here - but not anymore. He glares up at the guy, feeling righteously pissed-off. “Yeah, I’m sure you are, with all your- your _analysis._ What is your problem?”

Murray looks almost offended. “I don’t have a problem.”

“Yeah, you do. Hell, you must be a pretty lonely guy to involve yourself this much in other people. But wait, that’s right, you’re _not_ involved in other people, because the second shit gets actually real you fuck off for the sake of… I don’t know, your conspiracies, or whatever… _We’re_ the ones who got Joyce out of that hospital, after you left her there. And you left her and the others again, didn’t you? At the compound. That’s some real great friendship right there.”

Murray opens and closes his mouth, speechless. Jonathan and Nancy are watching with wide eyes. 

“Listen, you’ve done a lot for us, okay? But you’re a dick.”

He blinks. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “I guess I am. I meddle a lot. But you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, so I’m happy to stick to the plan from here on out.”

Steve stares at him, kind of amazed. He really wasn’t expecting that to have any effect at all. But the momentary confused relief is broken by Nancy’s voice - “That’s all very well but we still don’t _have_ a plan.”

Murray looks at her. “We storm the castle and rescue the princess,” he says wryly. “We don’t have any other options, do we? And besides, you have a point. I do owe Joyce something.”

“What about your dad?” Jonathan looks at Steve warily. Maybe he’s feeling left out, afraid Steve’s about to start playing happy families now that his dad isn’t shitty. 

But his dad is still shitty. A moment of repentance for his moral misdeeds doesn’t make up for a lifetime of terrible parenting. “Leave him here,” Steve says. “Unless he can help?”

“What if he knows about the layout of the compound? It was probably one of his blacksites, right?” Nancy crosses her arms. “We don’t have to bring him, but he might know how we get inside.”

After a moment, Steve nods. Then he goes outside and fetches his dad back in, who looks at him with an unreadable expression. Steve ignores it deliberately, and instead watches him sit down with his arms crossed and finally says, “How do we get into the compound?”

And his dad tells them.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

El opens her eyes with a gasp, the details of the vision still fading from her sight. That same golden kitchen, Terry with long sunny hair, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ open on the counter like it’s taunting her. After Vietnam that was where she found herself; Will was nowhere to be seen. 

And now she’s here, back in the compound with Papa and Owens and Leroy and Robin and Erica and Mr. Clarke blinking at her, Will still zoned out beside her, and Joyce nowhere to be seen. For a second she’s afraid that it’s like before, when Billy spoke to her in that dream version of the cabin, _First we are going to end_ you-

But it’s not like that. Papa leans over her and asks, “What did you see?” and she shakes her head and says, “Where is Joyce?” instead. 

“She’s gone into the town,” Owens says. “What did you find?”

El shakes her head. Nothing. They found nothing. Just the Beholder, playing its games with them. She looks at Robin. “What did Kali tell you?” she asks quietly. Because she knows Kali is involved in this somehow. Somehow.

Robin swallows. “She brought the Beholder here. I mean she didn’t _tell_ me, but I could work it out from everything she-”

“Yes,” Papa says smoothly. “She did bring it here. Why, Eleven?”

El swallows the churning feeling in her gut caused by the weight of his gaze. He eyes her like she’s _property._ And once upon a time that was all she knew, but now she knows freedom. Max and Mike and Hopper taught her that. “I want to see her.”

“That’s not-”

_“I want to see her.”_ She lets all her anger and fear bleed into her voice; it comes out sharp like a razor. 

There’s a moment of silence. Papa doesn’t want to give in, she knows. But he looks at Leroy and Owens and finally he nods. “You can see her.” He holds out a hand; she doesn’t take it. But she lets him lead them away. They leave Will, still unconscious, behind. Down several hallways, the layout too complicated to stick in her head, until they’re in front of a particular door and they stop. “Don’t try to plot an escape with her,” he says coolly. “I will know.”

She swallows hard. More than ever she wishes she had her powers - but she doesn’t. She has to face this powerless and alone.

She enters the room. It’s strange, with cushioned dark walls. Kali is sat in the middle with her arms twisted into a strange jacket - a straitjacket, El’s mind supplies - and a distant, horrible expression, like she’s not really here. But when El clears her throat and says, “Kali,” quietly, nervously, her sister’s gaze snaps to her.

“Jane,” Kali breathes. “You’re okay.”

El nods, and draws slowly closer. “They said- did you- the Beholder-”

Kali smiles an unhappy smile. “I didn’t mean to. Jane- I didn’t mean to. I _didn’t._ But they hurt me- and I just wanted to get out-”

She knows that feeling. She knows that feeling all too well. The demogorgon in the dark, everyone telling her to reach out to it even though she knew she shouldn’t- _I’m the monster_ \- 

“They pushed me. They pushed me too far. They weren’t happy that I could simply make people see things - they wanted more. And they hurt me when I couldn’t produce what they wanted. So eventually I tried - I tried so hard, too hard. I reached too far and I found something that didn’t want to be found.”

“The Beholder,” El whispers.

Kali nods, as much as she can nod in the restrictions of the stupid fucking jacket. “If that’s what you’d like to call it. I didn’t mean to, Jane, I swear- but once I brought it in, I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t. I just- used it to escape. It was an opportunity but I never wanted it to happen, not really. Not really.”

El bites her lip. She remembers the man on the floor, gasping for breath as she choked him with her mind, and that shattered photograph of his children next to him. The way Kali wanted to kill him anyway. She’s more ruthless than El is; she _wants_ to hurt. But can El blame her for that?

The answer is no. She can’t.

So she just nods. “How do we stop it?”

Kali looks at her for a moment. “You can’t. It’s everywhere. It is _everywhere,_ Jane.”

El shakes her head. “No. No, there has to be a way.” She refuses to believe there isn’t a way. If not to destroy it, then at least to shut it out. “Please.”

“Jane…” Kali bites her lip. “Maybe. Maybe there is a way. It’s not- I don’t know. It may not work. But… you’d have to find its root. Not here. Not only here. Because it exists everywhere, remember? Everywhere at once. The root of it doesn’t exist just in this moment. My powers- I show people things. Things they want, or things they fear. I pushed too hard to find what they wanted and what they feared. That’s how I let the Beholder in. It doesn’t exist as we exist, Jane. It itself is made up of fears and desires.”

El looks at her hopelessly. There’s no real help in that, just more futility. How does she end this? She doesn’t know. And then the door opens and she whips around, raising a hand instinctively even though she can’t do anything, not anymore. 

It’s Owens. He grimaces at her, almost _sorry._ “Have you learnt anything?” he asks. “Because if you have, we need it now.” She frowns questioningly. In answer, he responds, “The perimeter. It’s expanded again. We’re inside it.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits: [the house of the rising sun](https://open.spotify.com/track/2SeYNFCBYSsnfXYD3uYhNd?si=4rvwT1i6RC67oUUe70ZB-A) by buster poindexter
> 
> the final chapter may go up a little late next week, since it's not entirely complete and my life is chaos right now (thanks covid) but if it is late it should be by a week at the most. sorry in advance! but anyway, let me know your thoughts before the final instalment <3


	8. Eye of the Beholder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The different groups each prepare in their own way to attack the monster; Will finally confronts his demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are, at the very end. 
> 
> tw for homophobia & homophobic language, gore and violence, discussion of abuse, discussion of mental illness, and minor character death

“I’ve never been in those places where I’ve never been  
and never will be, I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years,  
but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time  
is my own.”  
– Yehuda Amichai, trans. Chana Bloch & Chana Kronfield, _I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What is My Life Span? Open Closed Open_ (2000)

“I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room  
where everyone finally gets what they want.  
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”  
– Richard Siken, _Snow and Dirty Rain_ (2005)

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

** Wednesday, January 22nd, 1986 **

**Somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota**

“El! El! _El!”_

Will’s voice goes hoarse with shouting, with searching, and still there’s no response. They were together after the Vietnam jungle, where they watched - he swallows - his mom bleed out on the ground and then disappear before their eyes, but then everything melted away and left him alone in the dark again.

He’s afraid.

What if the Beholder got her? 

It got his mom, which means it still has some presence here, some power, even though this is Will’s Inbetween and not the Beholder’s projection… so maybe nothing he’s seen here is real at all. His mom a teenager crying and bleeding in that bathroom - but that seemed true enough, judging by his mom’s reaction to it. The way she went pale, pinched her trembling lips together. 

That only makes it harder. Because if some things are real, and some aren’t-

How does he tell the difference?

He thinks back to all the months they’ve spent in Minnesota. Going to school, the diner, hanging out with Ryan and Tony. _Tony._ How much of that was real? Was any of it real?

As he thinks about it, the darkness melts away. He looks around to find himself on the sports pitch at the high school, the bleachers rising up above him, everything cast in dark golden light from the approaching sunset. He looks up and he knows what he’ll see before he sees it: himself, sitting on the step above Tony, who’s stretched out with his blunt in hand. 

He can hear snatches of their conversation: “...guys sure we won’t get caught?”

“Relax. It’s nearly dark…” and something inaudible, “...comes out here this late.”

Despite himself he begins to climb the steps up towards them. He doesn’t want to see this again, the same but from another angle, unable to intervene, but there must be a reason he’s here. If this isn’t real- or if it _is_ -

Ryan stands up and leaves. This is it. This is the moment. He watches himself frown, sigh, say, “I just- I faced a lot of shit in our old town. Some bad stuff happened. And it wasn’t El they picked on, it was me, like when they called me zombie boy, like when-” and then apologise, and Tony gives him a smile and a kind word, and that’s when Will was done for.

He can’t watch the kiss. He turns away. God, he’s so stupid. So goddamn stupid. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Tony says, and it’s like it echoes around the open air, the dying light of the afternoon sun. _I shouldn’t have done that_ \- and Will turns and finds Tony looking at him. Him now, not the other him, not the one Tony just kissed. Tony’s eyes are on his and the longer he looks the more he realises that _Tony’s eyes aren’t human._

He’s an empty shell. A ghost, playing out the old rhythms of his life, whatever he did and was like before the Beholder took him over, just like Will’s dad. He’s an empty shell and the Beholder did this on purpose, Will thinks. This was deliberate.

All along, he was being toyed with.

His fear is gone. Rising in its place is an inevitable burning rage. Rage - because for so long his life hasn’t been his own. He’s been controlled, manipulated, fucking _possessed_. And this- this was important. His first kiss. His crush on Tony. It took him so long to get even to this point, to shut out his dad’s nagging voice calling him a _fag_ , _It’s not my fault you don’t like girls_ , and for it all to be a lie?

God, he’s mad. The same rage he felt when he tore Castle Byers to shreds last July, only then it was directed inwards. He felt stupid, pathetic. A child, unable to move forward. Now-

Now he’s mad at everything that ever stood in his way.

As the fury sparks in his veins and his hands curl into fists, he feels something in the world around him _tear._ He takes a step forward and the bleachers disappear. Instead he’s looking at an empty suburban street, gloomy and dark with the sky slowly lightening into dawn above it. Empty - except for five lonely figures walking down it, looking around nervously, holding up what seem like makeshift weapons. Will frowns at them, walks closer. Then he recognises them.

“Mike!” he calls, his heart in his throat. But the Mike-shaped silhouette turns. He can _hear_ him, which means that maybe this is real, maybe he finally crossed the Inbetween and made it to the town.

The group comes running up to him. Mike, Max, Lucas, Dustin, and Mrs. Wheeler. No Hopper, which makes him frown. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

“Where did you go?”

“What happened to the others? Is El okay?”

“How-”

“He can teleport, remember?” Dustin interrupts the flurry of questions. “But yeah, what did happen to the others?”

“They’re okay,” Will responds. At least, he thinks they are. He left El and his mom in that compound, he thinks, and his stomach turns. That’s if his mom even made it out of the Inbetween alive. “It was the government, somehow they found the town and took us all back to a compound they have somewhere near here.”

“Brenner,” Mike spits. 

“Listen, I’m here to- to get you guys out of here. It’s not safe.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then- “No. No way.” Lucas’ voice is hard - out of the corner of his eye, he sees Max and Mike glance at him in surprise. “We can’t do anything from out there, can we? We have to end this from in here.”

“He’s right. We know it doesn’t affect kids, not in the same way.”

Will swallows. “It’s not just the Beholder,” he says. “The Beholder- it’s flayed. This is the Mind Flayer.”

Mrs. Wheeler’s eyes have gone wide. “The what?”

“Bad news,” Mike says, by way of explanation. “Even more reason for us to destroy it. We have to do _something.”_

“I don’t know…” she says, biting her lip. She’s carrying a shovel - Will guesses as a weapon. Somehow, she’s the most surprising part of all this. “Is it safe?”

“None of this is safe,” Max says, not unkindly. “The demogorgon’s probably killed Hopper already and we’re trapped in a town that messes with our heads. And who knows if Will can take all of us back?”

Will bites his lip. This wasn’t the plan - but the fury is still pulsing through his blood and they’re right, they have to do _something._ Especially if Hopper’s dead - dead for real this time. After everything they did - his mom did - to get him back- “Okay. We should start at that old government building.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

In some distant corner of his mind, Hopper knows that none of this is real. He’s well accustomed to hallucinations, caused by something far more mundane than the supernatural - just too many pills and too much whiskey and the endless grief that spilled out his pores without stopping. And Sara is dead. This is another fact he’s accustomed to. But all of this knowledge doesn’t stop him from _wanting_ it.

Sara, a pretty teenager now with a full blonde head of hair. Diane smiling at him across the table as Sara tells them the latest story from science class, because she _loves_ science even though her teacher’s a jerk and her friends make fun of her for it and the boy she likes consistently gets Ds in it but that doesn’t matter because she doesn’t care about any of that, she just cares about space and the stars and she’ll never stop learning, not ever. 

And Hopper watches her with a distant, tragic smile on his face, because he’s well aware that this isn’t real. And that’s not what the Beholder wants, is it? The Beholder wasn’t expecting that. But he’s spent a hell of a lot of time alone with his thoughts the past seven months and he’s more inclined to believe that something isn’t real rather than to believe that it is.

So he smiles at Diane and listens to Sara and laughs at the appropriate points, indulging in it like a vacation from reality. In a way, it is. He knows that when the illusion fades he’ll be back in the dark, treacherous town, stalked by the demogorgon with death around every corner. It’s nice here. A nice break from reality.

But he’s not gonna stay, because he packed all this away back in 1979 when Sara died. He could never replace her but he has El now, and he saved Will, and if they can go some way towards filling the gaping hole in his chest then he’s gonna take it, because he’s not going back. He can’t go back. 

So eventually the vision fades into the dim light of dawn, and he’s alone on the street again.

He brushes away a stray tear and clears his throat. He has to keep moving, regardless of the haze of unrealities that hangs in the air. If he can make it to the old government building they talked about then maybe he can do something about this. He hoists the trusty Kalashnikov, brought all the way from Russia, higher in his grip. 

“Hop.”

The voice is soft, almost- flirty? And he recognises it, which is the weirdest thing. It’s Joyce. He turns. 

She’s standing in the middle of the road, dawn mist creeping around her, looking ethereal and unreal in the pale lilac glow. Her hair is long and wavy, her skin smooth and white and shining. She’s lost ten years from her age at least. And she smiles at him, and walks towards him, and he realises she’s wearing a silky blue dress that clings to every curve and exposes more of her skin than he’s seen in years. 

“Hop,” she says again, a strange breathiness to her voice. She reaches him and her hand comes up to cup his cheek. Up close she’s even more perfect - wide eyes ringed with eyeliner, rather than dark circles and age lines. Perfect red lipstick, like she used to wear in high school. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you last year. I wanted you. I want you.” 

She blinks long eyelashes at him, like she’s asking for his forgiveness - like she’s asking him to do more than that. He stares at her, dazed. She bites her lip - and it’s teasing, flirty, rather than anxious. And the thing is- 

He wants her too.

Almost without thinking his hands come up to her waist. She presses against him and gives him a blood-red smirk. He leans down- 

And then-

“Hopper!”

The illusion is shattered. Because the other voice is Joyce as well, quintessentially Joyce, the Joyce he _knows._ Deeper and raspy from twenty five years’ smoking; full of panic, rather than seduction. He twists away from the phantom and looks at her. She’s herself - older, tired-looking, that gray streak in her hair. Her chest is heaving and she’s reaching out to him like she’s afraid to step any closer.

“Joyce,” he says, starting to move towards her. The phantom’s hands twist in his collar and hold him there, startlingly strong. 

you don’t want **her.** you want **me,** it says, and the artifice is gone. He looks it in the eyes and nothing about it is human, nothing. It’s dead like Lonnie was, before he put a bullet in his brain. He shoves it away from him as hard as he can and feels a clawing hand snatch at the back of his coat, tearing it, as he runs towards Joyce, the real Joyce - and then nothing. When he turns to look, the road is empty.

“Jesus, Hopper, what-” Joyce raises a hand and wipes a trail of blood from her nose. “It nearly got you. If I hadn’t been here-”

He recalls the way he rejected the phantom of Sara without a single second thought. It must be hungry, he thinks, if it changed tactic. What’s most terrifying is that - as Joyce said - _it nearly got him._ It nearly worked. 

Clearly he’s not as good at separating illusion from reality as he thought.

“Did you see it? What I saw?” he risks asking.

She looks at him evenly. “Yeah, I did. If that’s how you see me, no wonder you wanted to take me to Enzo’s.”

It takes a second for the humor to register; when it does, he lets out a weak laugh. “That isn’t- that isn’t how I see you,” he says.

“Really?” Her brows knit together, creasing in the middle. He loves it when she does that. “I don’t know whether to be offended.”

“Don’t be. It isn’t- that isn’t you. It’s not _you._ ” He’s not good at putting his feelings in words; he just hopes she understands. “I like this you.”

She gives him a thin smile. “That’s sweet of you. I’m not sure I do.” He touches her arm - not even out of habit. Just muscle memory. But she softens into the touch and apparently it convinces her to open up further, despite it all, because she says, “Every man I know seems to have some kind of- idea of me. Lonnie, you-” She closes her eyes. “I wonder what Bob would have seen of me.”

“He liked you, Joyce.” It’s begrudging but it’s true. It was obvious. “The guy was so moony over you he was practically in space-”

She laughs and then closes her mouth like she didn’t mean to, like she’s betraying something by doing it. “I know he was,” she says quietly. “That’s what got him killed.”

He looks at her. “Joyce, he didn’t- he didn’t die just because of that. He died to save everyone. Because he was a good man. And it was- it was some shitty accident of fate, anyway. I don’t-” He exhales through his nose. “If your Mr. Clarke’s right about all that stuff about different worlds, everything being different, then this- I guess this is the world where Bob didn’t make it. And we have to square with that.”

“He’s not _my_ Mr. Clarke.” He’s relieved to hear that her tone is light. Then it drops into serious again. “I know, Hopper. I’ve seen those worlds. And I know that if he- if he hadn’t been there, then you wouldn’t have made it. Maybe none of us would have made it. And if we hadn’t made it then he would have died anyway. But it’s still-” She swallows visibly. “It’s still my fault. Whether it saved us or not, it’s still-”

“Okay,” he says. She stares at him, eyes wide with shock. “If you think it’s your fault then- well, you know more about it than me. But you can also forgive yourself for it.”

Her voice breaks. “Can I?”

He touches her arm again, but says nothing. He just hopes that she’ll realise that he’s right - because he’s not right about a lot of things, but he’s right about this. Just like he was right about shooting Anderson in Vietnam even though that was a _life_ , a guy who’d stuck with him through thick and thin before but sometimes-

Sometimes you have to forgive yourself. If it’s the only way you can keep going.

She clears her throat, wipes her eyes. He watches her and thinks that he’d never choose that pale, perfect phantom over her, never. Never. And then she looks up at him again with new resolve. “I’m here to stop this,” she says. Of course she is. He wouldn’t expect anything less. “Maybe if we can go to that old government lab…”

He nods. “I was thinking that too.” 

“Okay. Then… let’s go.” 

He nods and shoulders the Kalashnikov, and they start walking.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

At the compound gates Nancy gets out of the van and starts talking to the guard about anything her mind can conjure up as Jonathan loops behind him and lunges to knock him out. The guard falls; Jonathan opens the gate. “Nice work,” Steve says, as they get back in the back of the van. Jonathan blinks at him.

“Thanks,” Nancy says, as they drive in. That was easy enough - but the difficult part is yet to come. She checks her gun, a nervous habit by now, and is relieved to find that the bullets haven’t disappeared into smoke. She refuses to take anything for granted at this point.

“So round the back, right? The service entrance,” Steve says.

“Yes,” Murray says in the passenger seat. “I’m pretty sure I know where they’re being held, so. In and out quietly, should be a cakewalk.” This is said sarcastically; Nancy chooses to ignore the tone. This has to work. She has to believe it will work. 

They pull into the parking lot at the back; the service entrance is just where Steve’s dad said it would be. They’ve already decided that Steve will stay behind to keep the van running - he was reluctant, but someone has to do it. So she, Jonathan and Murray leave him there and hurry inside. They don’t have a keycard for the door but there’s a keypad next to it, and thankfully Steve’s dad knew the code. Murray inputs it - and then they’re in.

The hallway is empty. There’s no one in sight and no sounds - just a blaring alarm overhead. She exchanges a glance with Jonathan. That’s not a good sign. They move off down the corridors, unnerved by the emptiness. She feels a chill pricking at the back of her neck. Jonathan has taken the lead, alongside Murray - she walks behind them, gun held poised. Something isn’t right.

And then they reach the room Murray talked about. It’s empty. He looks lost. “I don’t understand. They were here.” It’s a hospital room; Nancy remembers Robin’s gunshot wound. Wherever they are, they’re not here. 

They duck back out of the room and look at each other, considering their options. But before they can formulate a new plan, there’s the sound of rapid footsteps and they look down the hallway to see someone running towards them.

Nancy steps out into his way and levels her gun at him. “Stop and put your hands over your head,” she orders. 

He freezes and stares at them from five yards away. His eyes are wide and wild; he looks terrified. She doesn’t know what she’s expecting him to say but it’s not this: “You need to get out. We all need to get out. The perimeter, it’s expanded- It’s here.”

“What’s here?” Jonathan says, in a voice that barely hides his fear.

“ _The monster._ ” 

With this the guy drops his hands and runs, apparently deciding that Nancy’s bullet is a better fate than the monster somewhere in the hallways behind him. She lets him go. Her heart is pounding. “The perimeter’s expanded? So how did we get in here?”

Jonathan shakes his head. “I think- I think it’s something to do with me. I don’t know, I… I haven’t seen it yet, and it’s so focused on my mom, and Will has these powers-”

“You think it’s your family.”

He shifts uncomfortably. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Well, when we find the others, we can ask them. Let’s _go_ ,” Murray says. She nods, and warily they head down the corridor, in the direction the guy came from. She keeps her gun held out in front of her. Then they round the next corner and it’s a scene of chaos - people shouting, running, the lights flickering overhead. She glances at Jonathan again. They both know what that means. 

He’s holding the shotgun; he hoists it up. They advance down the hallway ignored by everyone around them - and then when there’s a murderous screech up ahead they duck into the nearest room and wince as the demogorgon cleaves a path through the fleeing people. Nancy takes a deep breath through her nose and tries to block out the sound of screaming. Jonathan slams the door shut and locks it with shaking fingers, and it’s only then that they turn around and see that the room isn’t empty.

El, Robin, Erica, Mr. Clarke. And Owens, and Brenner, and a man she doesn’t know. Her grip on her gun tightens - and without another thought she raises it and points it at Brenner. You don’t get anything for free, after all. He’s not going to just _let_ them go, even with a demogorgon stalking the hallways. 

“Nancy,” Murray hisses, warningly, but she ignores him. She takes a step forward.

“You’re going to let us all leave,” she says. “That includes El.”

“And Kali,” El adds sharply.

Jonathan steps up beside her. “Where are Will and my mom?” he asks quietly, his voice unsteady.

“Joyce went into the town,” Owens says. “And-“

“So did Will,” El says softly. There’s hidden meaning behind her words - like he used his powers again. 

Jonathan’s gone pale. The fear is plain to see in his face - and Nancy knows the feeling. Her mom and Mike are in there too. But they have to do what they can for the others now.

“Get down on the ground,” she orders, gesturing with the gun. No one moves. “Now!”

Slowly, the man she doesn’t know gets to his knees. Brenner stares at her for a long moment, his eyes cold and dead, sharklike, before following. Owens too follows suit - because she guesses he has to maintain his cover, such as it is. He’s more use to them on the inside of all this. 

Then the others move towards the door, El the last to go, and Brenner seems to see an opportunity. “Eleven,” he says, voice low. It would be hypnotic, if Nancy weren’t so repulsed. “Eleven, don’t go. You need me. You need to be fixed, Eleven. You’re useless to them now. Stay here with me.”

El’s spine tenses; her back is turned to him but Nancy can see her fighting the impulse to look at him. She’s clenched her hands into fists by her sides.

“Eleven, you need me. I can fix you. Let me fix you.”

Finally, she turns to look at him. There are tears glinting in her eyes. “I can’t be fixed. None of this can be fixed. And I’m not going back.”

With that, she turns back to Nancy and moves towards the door. Nancy feels a surge of pride; she watches Jonathan hug his pseudo-sister, as Robin peers out of the door and nods. “The hallway’s clear.”

The demogorgon gone, for now. Who knows when it will come back. Nancy takes a deep breath. “Okay, so-”

“Kali,” El reminds her. “In the room- just opposite.” 

“Do we need a keycard for that?” Erica asks. 

Owens nods. He reaches his hand into his pocket and tosses his keycard to them from his position on the floor - Nancy’s aim doesn’t waver as Murray reaches down to pick it up. Then they back out into the hallway, all seven of them, Jonathan raising the shotgun and keeping a lookout on each forboding end. Murray locks the door behind them - locking Owens and Brenner and the other guy in. Safe from the demogorgon, and unable to pursue them - at least for a moment.

“Does anyone have a knife?” Robin asks with a tremor in her voice, coming out of the opposite room. Jonathan nods and produces his pocket knife, which Nancy knows he keeps on hand for emergencies, for the dangers that crawl out of the shadows every year, the same as she keeps her gun in her handbag. Robin’s arm is still in a sling so she just gets Jonathan to follow her into the room - and a few seconds later they emerge with Kali still shrugging off a sliced-up straitjacket.

A _straitjacket._ Jesus.

“Shall we go?” Kali says, as they all stare at her. 

“Are you... you’re not going to...” Mr. Clarke trails off. 

She narrows her eyes. “Yes, I brought it here. But I did not mean to. And if I can help you stop it- then I will.”

Robin very conspicuously takes Kali’s hand. Nancy frowns, trying to understand it, because it doesn’t make sense with what she knows. Robin doesn’t know Kali all that well, does she? But clearly she’s standing up for her now and maybe that makes Nancy respect her a little bit more. 

“Let’s _go_ ,” Nancy says, and then she leads them back down the corridor the way they came. The lights constantly flicker overhead and her nerves are balanced on a narrow edge. Before they round each corner she holds her breath - but they’re nearly there.

Nearly there, until the lights go out.

Erica lets out a yelp. Nancy stops moving and, trying to stop her hands from shaking, aims wildly in the dark. Because it’s _here_ , it has to be, that’s what the darkness _means-_

“El!” someone’s shouting behind her and she whips around to see El being dragged back down the corridor away from them, too shocked to even scream, the demogorgon’s sinuous body heavy and alien in the dark. Nancy fires at it but its hide is bulletproof; it snarls at her. Jonathan comes forward and fires the shotgun - this, at least, makes it stumble. Murray and Mr. Clarke run forward and drag El back away from it but it recovers quickly and bats them both aside, looming over El with its slavering jaws open and hungry-

There’s a deafening rattle of sound. The hallway is lit up with automatic gunfire; the demogorgon shrieks and cowers away. Nancy stares in amazement as a figure emerges from the other end of the corridor, brandishing a submachine gun, teeth bared in a furious grin. He drives the monster into the corner and then steps towards them, still firing to keep it down.

“Ilya?” Murray says disbelievingly. 

The guy smiles. “Nice to see you. Did you ever find your American?”

“Yes,” Murray answers slowly. “Yes, we did.”

The demogorgon begins to move again, resisting the hail of bullets. Ilya can’t have much ammo left. Nancy prepares herself to start shooting again. “You Americans,” he says. “Idiots. _Go.”_

“What are you gonna do?”

He grins, and says something in Russian. Murray’s face twists but he nods and then all of them are running down the hallway together, the other way, the wrong way, adrenaline pounding as the gunfire continues to rattle behind them. Murray pulls them left and then right again and they all just blindly follow him, hoping he knows where the hell he’s going.

Somehow, he does, because they run out of the main entrance and find Steve in the van waiting there like he was expecting them. They all pile in and Steve floors it, and Nancy is eerily reminded of another night in another year and another government facility, Mike half-carrying Joyce to the car as she sobbed for a loss Nancy and Jonathan didn’t know about yet. “What did he say?” she demands of Murray, who has a distant, sad look.

“ _In Russia, we own up to our mistakes_.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When they run into Mrs. Byers and Hopper outside the ruined government compound, Will melts into Mrs. Byers’ arms, repeating _I thought you were gone_ over and over. She holds him close and Max tries not to eye them too enviously. She looks at Hopper instead, who looks grimy and weary but alive. He must be practically unkillable at this point.

Then they all stand in a half-circle and try to decide what to do.

“So the Beholder is flayed, and it’s somehow the Mind Flayer’s window into the world…”

“Like its own kind of gate.” 

“And if we close that gate…”

“By killing the Beholder-”

“-then we end this.”

Max crosses her arms and leans back against a tree. It sounds like a lot of theory to her, and not much fact - but that’s all they have to go on, isn’t it? Theories and stupid analogies based on DnD. 

“I think maybe I can stop the Beholder,” Will says, from his spot by his mom’s side. “Like how El closed the gate, I think maybe- maybe I can do something similar.”

“Okay, but it exists in Hawkins too. It can’t be as simple as closing it from this side.” 

“It’s the cave, right? That’s the epicenter of it in Hawkins.” Lucas has crossed his arms - Max glances at him and finds herself resisting the inappropriate urge to smile. She’s missed him so much. “What if we just… went there and blew it up?”

There’s a silence. It’s drastic, kind of a classic Lucas move - after all, the fireworks last summer were his idea too - but it might just work. 

“Could that work?” Hopper asks quietly, contemplatively. 

Mrs. Byers looks up at him and shrugs helplessly. “It’s worth a try.”

The group looks at each other, silently agreeing. It is worth a try. They have no better ideas - no other ideas at all. “So how do we do that?” Max questions. “Where do we get explosives?”

“I can get us some in Hawkins,” Hopper says. “I had- well. Something ready, just in case, before…” he trails off. 

“We can go back through the singularity to Hawkins,” Dustin says. “I’ll come with you-” 

Mrs. Byers is already shaking her head. “No, I don’t want any more people than we need going through the cave, especially the kids. I think- I think I can guide us through there. It should be me and Hop.”

“Joyce, you haven’t been to Hawkins in a long time. It’s changed.” Mrs. Wheeler’s tone is persuasive, not unkind. “I’m coming too.”

“But the kids-” Mrs. Byers’ face has gone white. 

“We’ll be fine,” Mike says. “The demogorgon won’t find us out here.”

“But-” 

Hopper touches her arm and leads her off a little distance away, where they have a whispered, heated conversation, inaudible to the rest of them. But then they return and Mrs. Byers nods shakily. 

“Okay,” she says. “But be safe, and if anything happens, anything at all, you _run._ Don’t try and fight, don’t-”

“Mom, we’ll be fine,” Will says gently. She hugs him and Max looks away - but then she moves along and hugs Mike too, and then Dustin, and Lucas, and then finally Max. She’s warm and soft and good at hugging. Max’s mom hasn’t hugged her since Billy died.

Mrs. Wheeler hugs Mike and then the three adults step back. “How will you know when we’ve done it?” she asks, frowning.

“We’ll know,” Will says. He seems so strange and knowledgeable now, like El - though there was always something weird about him. Max never knew him before the Upside Down, before everything changed for him. 

“Be safe,” Joyce says again. And then they head into the building, leaving the kids behind.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When Owens thought about his future as a kid getting his second PhD, he pictured tenure, maybe some government consultancy to top up his income on the side, a nice mahogany-panelled office with his degree certificates on the wall. What he didn’t anticipate was this: facing down his death in a secret government compound in Minnesota under flickering lights with blood splattered over the walls and a monster stalking the hallways. 

Still, he thinks, he had a good run. And this death has been waiting for him. Ever since he escaped HNL with nothing but a scar on his leg to show for it, this death has been waiting for him.

He steps over Ilya’s ruined, bloody corpse with a grimace. Then he reconsiders it and goes back for the submachine gun. Behind him Brenner and Leroy are picking their way over the bloodstained floor; he’s considered leaving them behind more than once, but that’s not the wisest course of action. If they all make it out of here alive he needs to stay on their good sides. He’s always been more of a Doctor than an Agent, but he can play the spy if necessary.

He grips the gun and keeps on walking. Behind him, Brenner sighs. “Our first priority should be the recapture of Eleven.”

Owens stops and stares at him. “Now I get why they removed you in the first place. Our first priority is getting out of here alive. You should know, you’ve faced one of these things before.”

Brenner sneers at him. But his power is diminishing, and he knows it. Ever since Eleven turned away from him, _I can’t be fixed. None of this can be fixed. And I’m not going back_ , he’s lost all that authority he once had. 

Leroy raises an eyebrow. “Something neither of you seem to realise is that if this situation isn’t resolved quickly, they’re gonna go ahead and nuke us out of existence. That includes the Byers woman you so graciously sent into the town, and your precious Subject Eleven.”

“Well then let’s get out of here and make sure that doesn’t happen, shall we?” Owens says, ignoring the thrill of panic that goes through him at Leroy’s words. Because it’s no empty threat. This has become too much of a problem to ignore. And what the higher-ups at the DoE and further consider a problem, they generally set fire to.

But Murray got out. And Murray has the recordings, and the proof, and the skillset to use it. So if Owens doesn’t make it out, and Murray has the sense to do what he needs to, then maybe they’ll be okay. The others. The ones to whom Owens owes something more than just a birth certificate, because he’s been inside the house the whole time it’s been on fire and he’s done nothing.

It’s when he hears the monster’s screech up ahead that he knows he won’t make it out of this alive. 

He can’t go back and change things. He can’t go back and intervene in the awful treatment of the numbered subjects in Project Dante; he can’t stop Brenner from encouraging Eleven to open the gate in the first place. 

But he can pay for his mistakes.

He slows his pace. He looks at Brenner and Leroy and knows without even thinking that Leroy is the more reasonable; Brenner is too fixated on his pursuit of Eleven, of some mystical truth to be revealed with LSD and sensory deprivation tanks and torturing children with cattle prods.

“We can’t let them nuke it,” Owens says. “You know that, right? That’s worse than worse case scenario.”

“It’s a numbers scenario, Sam. Lives lost against lives saved. And in this case-”

“But we don’t know it will work. We don’t know that. If it exists outside of time and place why shouldn’t it survive a nuclear blast?”

There’s a silence. Leroy looks to be seriously considering his words; Brenner is far away, probably thinking about Eleven and Eight. It’s been his life for twenty years, Owens supposes. That’s a long time.

And in that silence, there’s another sound.

A sound he knew in Russia.

He freezes as claws click on the concrete towards them. The striplights above them, previously flickering, have gone dead. He clutches the submachine gun in suddenly clammy hands and tries to remember how to use it. 

“What do we-”

“Shh,” he whispers, but it’s too late. The next sound vibrates up his spine - a soft growl, nearly a snarl, clearly an animal, nowhere near human. It’s coming for them. He raises the gun. And then he sees it, only two yards away. Sinuous and awful, that gaping rotten mouth growling wide-

Brenner scrambles away down the other hallway, clearly shaken out of his daydreams of recapturing Eight and Eleven, his footsteps echoing throughout the dead building - and the demogorgon leans closer. Owens flinches at the taste of its sour breath. But then the lights flicker again and when he opens his eyes it’s gone-

And he turns to see it devouring Brenner alive.

He’s screaming desperately, agonisingly, his innards spilling from his torso as it tears his flesh open easy as paper. Owens stares beside Leroy in the flickering lights as Brenner - newly resurrected, freshly murdered - gets torn to shreds. To pieces. Gone.

And then it’s Leroy who runs, but Owens stands his ground. Owens stands his ground, because a captain goes down with his ship. And he’s the only captain this ship has ever had, because he’s the only one that ever treated it even slightly well. He didn’t abuse it, torture it, steal children from their mothers and lock them in cupboards. No, he was a good captain.

And he’ll go down with the ship.

(He hopes Leroy does the right thing-)

He raises the submachine gun.

The beast turns. He fires-

It flinches-

It comes back-

The last thing he’s thinking of, when it inevitably tears into his abdomen and spills his guts all over the floor, is how he’s prouder of saving Joyce and her children than he is of the seven PhD certificates hanging on his wall.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Karen goes off to check on Ted and Holly as Joyce and Hopper walk to his cache (because of course he has a _weapons cache._ Maybe Alexei was right about Rambo). When she’s gone Joyce isn’t sure whether it’s more awkward or less; the three of them haven’t been together, apart from that moment at the fair in July, since their teenage years. But Hopper still has that weird look in his eyes whenever he looks at her - a weird, heavy look. 

Finally, as they’re picking their way through the woods from the cave near her old house towards his old trailer, he lets out whatever he’s clearly been thinking about the whole way. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Last summer, I was-”

“Yeah,” she says. “You were.”

“I had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking when I was in Russia. And I was just- I don’t know. I was clinging to El, and to you, way too hard because I was afraid of things changing. Because everything was changing - her, this town with the mall and all the stores closing, you leaving-”

“That wasn’t about you,” she interrupts. “I need- I need you to know that. Me leaving wasn’t about you. You were the reason I- I hadn’t quite made the decision yet. I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t.”

He nods. “Okay,” he says seriously, and he’s so different now. More like he used to be - but not quite. He was always quiet but he’s quieter now. Sharp edges still, but not so brutish. “I just- about the whole date thing-”

“It’s fine, Hopper. Seriously. I-” She swallows. “I wasn’t ready for that. Which is something you used to know. But it’s- it was a long time ago now. A lot’s happened since.”

He stops walking and gently touches her arm. “I know it has. But that doesn’t mean I was right. I was an asshole.”

“Hopper, you weren’t- it’s not that simple-” She sighs heavily. “I’m sorry I stood you up. Once I get something in my head- the magnets-”

“I know. It’s okay.”

She looks at him. “Okay,” she says, and it feels like forgiveness. For him, and for her. The knot in her chest begins to loosen. Idly she thinks about them as teenagers, careless and stupid, way too young for this. And all the years in between, when it was never the right time. Maybe it finally is the right time. Maybe they can finally get what they want.

They’ve reached the road leading up to his trailer. They begin to walk down it, as a few fragile flakes of snow drift down from the gray morning sky. It’s strange being back here, after so long. It doesn’t feel any different, not really, but there’s less of a weight on her chest than before. She was right to get away from here, she thinks, money or no money. They all needed it.

There’s the sound of a car on the road behind them. They both hurriedly turn their faces away as it passes - their being here is sure to raise questions - and she frowns as she recognises it as the Hawkins PD Blazer. Hopper’s old Blazer. 

The frown deepens as it slows, and pulls over, and someone gets out. He walks towards them and Joyce begins to panic. “Shit,” she hisses, because that’s the new goddamn Chief of Police and she’s standing here with a dead man holding a Kalashnikov. 

Hopper, catching on, ducks his head and looks away, but it’s a vain hope. His face was splashed all over the papers in July, and he hasn’t changed _that_ much. 

“Haven’t seen you two around here before,” the new Chief says, stopping in front of them and frowning. He’s short, maybe five seven, with heavy eyebrows and thinning hair. No hat. Any second now he’s gonna catch on-

“Is it a crime to walk around the neighborhood now?” Hopper snaps, righteously angry and probably jealous, and like lightning the recognition strikes.

“Holy mother of god,” the Chief says, eyes widening, hand going to his gun, and that’s the dangerous bit. Hopper’s still holding the Kalashnikov but Joyce is praying he won’t use it - not on a human person, untainted by the Beholder.

Or is he?

Because his stance shifts and his eyes are cold and this is all too familiar. “James Hopper,” he says. “And- what, I guess Joyce Byers? Guess crazy seems to surround you.”

She barely flinches - she’s used to it - but Hopper bares his teeth like a dog at the end of its leash. “And you are?” he asks, voice dangerously low.

“Chief Randall. I’m gonna need you both to come with me. From what I’m seeing right now, you’re both a danger to society.”

“Oh, don’t give me that crap,” Hopper says, and there’s fury in his voice. She’s reminded of last July, the way he lost his temper at the slightest provocation. It’s on its way now, she knows. 

She eyes them both nervously, and then steps in between them. “Look, I’m sure we can sort this out-”

Randall sneers down at her. God, he’s an asshole. She feels her jaw jut out in defiance. “Listen, Mrs. Byers. I know you haven’t lived here in a while, so you don’t know how things work. But this is _my_ town now. And if I say you’re coming with me?” He smiles faintly. “You’re coming with me.”

She smiles back at him tightly, sarcastically, and now she thinks it’ll be Hopper who holds her back from clawing his face off, rather than the other way around. “No, how about you listen here, pal. What we’re doing here is none of your business, and we’re gonna walk away, and you’re gonna let us.”

Randall raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Yeah,” Hopper says behind her. “It is.”

She can’t see it, but she knows he’s shifted his stance to show off the Kalashnikov. Using it is another matter, but hopefully Randall will see sense. His police-issue revolver is hardly a match against a Soviet submachine gun. “Nice gun you got there,” he says. “You got a permit for that?”

“Dead men don’t get permits,” Hopper says. That’s when Randall takes his gun out.

Involuntarily, a lick of panic crawls up Joyce’s throat. She swallows hard. Around them the snow is beginning to fall harder and they’re on a time limit here; the longer they wait, the more chance the demogorgon has to find the kids-

“Let us pass,” she says. “Please.”

Randall says nothing. 

She looks at him, tries to work out whether he’s _himself_ or not. If there’s something dead and inhuman behind his eyes. She can’t tell, so maybe there’s not. Can they risk killing him to find out? Can she live with that?

She takes another step forward, and then he swings the gun around to point at her and everything happens very quickly after that.

Hopper lunges and knocks the gun out of his hand. Randall counters by throwing a punch and Hopper staggers back. Blood splatters the snow but then Hopper comes back up and knocks him to the floor; he lands with a thud and a groan and Hopper’s fist in his face again. Randall’s knee comes up somewhere that’s gotta hurt and it’s Hopper’s turn to groan- he falls back into the snow and Randall grapples to keep him down- 

The revolver lies discarded in the muddy slush by the side of the road.

Joyce grabs it and aims it, breathing shakily as she waits for them to stop moving so she can get a clear shot-

Hopper lands a solid punch to the side of Randall’s head and then scrambles away as he struggles to get to his feet again. He manages it finally but by now Hopper’s back by Joyce’s side and she’s aiming the gun straight at him, hands miraculously steady: “Stay down,” she hisses, and with a murderous glare he obeys. “We’re gonna cross the road and walk a hundred yards away. And when we have, you’re gonna get in your truck and you’re gonna drive away, and you’re gonna forget you ever saw us. Understand?”

“I don’t-”

“ _Do you understand?”_

Slowly, he nods. Hopper picks up the fallen Kalashnikov and waves it in his general direction mildly, a vague threat. “Nice seeing you, Chief. Hate what you’ve done with the place.”

And then they walk away, leaving him kneeling in the snow. They cross the road; they get a hundred yards away. They watch him get in his truck and drive away. And then they hurry to Hopper’s old trailer, because they’re running out of time, and she watches him probe the ground in the backyard, by the shore of the icy lake, until something sounds different and he sifts the snow away and the ground opens up into a weapons cache.

“Shit, Hopper,” she whispers, looking at it. He was prepared. Over-prepared. “We could’ve used this last year.”

“No time,” he grits out, though there’s bitter regret in his voice. He pulls out two military knapsacks and starts loading them with weaponry; she crouches down and begins to help. 

“Y’know he’s gonna tell people. Randall.”

He nods tightly. “Yeah. I know. But if we make it out of this alive, the DoE will come down on the whole thing like a ton of bricks. Again.”

“They had a hell of a job of it last summer. The town was a mess. Over thirty people died.” Her throat tightens. “Including you.”

He gives her a wry smile. “And now look at me.”

“Now look at you,” she allows. She thinks about Randall, about the cruel fury in his eyes, about how Hopper’s a lot of things but he was never cruel, not even last summer. 

“If we make it out of this alive-”

She shakes her head. “Don’t. Don’t do that. Last time I did that and- and look what happened.” She blinks away stinging tears. “And Bob, too. I told him I’d move to Maine with him and not twenty-four hours later he was dead. I can’t make promises, Hop. People wind up dead.”

He looks at her, pauses in what he’s doing. “Okay,” he says softly. “But you’re not cursed, Joyce. I spent a long time believing I was cursed and yet- here I am. Against all the odds. Because I took my fate into my own hands in jumping through that gate and because you were strong enough to believe them when they told you I was alive and because El and Will could find me. We’re not cursed, Joyce. We’re just here.”

She breathes out shakily. “Okay.” 

He finishes packing up the bags and stands up, dusting snow from the knees of his pants. Over the lake, the sun is burning behind a thin veil of gray cloud and snow is still drifting down around them, settling in their clothes and hair. “Ready?”

They’ll walk back through the woods to the cave; they’ll meet Karen there and set the explosives; they’ll end this, at least from their end, and hope Will can do the rest. She nods, and stands up too. “Ready.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

They leave Robin, Mr. Clarke, Lucas’ sister, and Murray at the motel. Murray is left to sort out ‘the government bullshit’; Robin particularly isn’t happy about staying behind, but her painkillers are wearing off so Steve steers her into a chair and makes her stay there without much of a fight. And then he turns back, pointedly ignoring the man everyone says is his dad, and says, “Let’s go.”

El gets back in the van and toys with the seam of the scrubs they made her change into back at the compound. She doesn’t like wearing them. She misses her own clothes. But she has no choice, now, so she just fiddles with them. 

“You okay?” 

She looks up to see Jonathan frowning gently at her, always concerned, always brotherly. She nods. He sits down beside her, and then Kali gets in too, and Nancy in the front passenger seat. The door slams shut; they drive off. She twists her hands in her lap and tries to ignore the way both Jonathan and Kali are looking at her. 

She likes having siblings.

But she doesn’t like feeling like she has to be looked after.

Once upon a time she didn’t have to be; she had her powers, and she could do _anything._ But not anymore. Now she’s helpless. And she turned away from Papa, that’s true, but that didn’t make her stronger. He promised to get her powers back and she said no, and that leaves her with nothing.

“The root,” she says quietly. Kali looks at her. “That’s how we stop it, yes? We find the root and we crush it.”

“I think so. It’s not- it’s not foolproof. But it’s worth trying.”

“We have to try,” Jonathan adds, and El nods. They lapse into silence again - and they remain that way until they arrive back in the town, the perimeter meaning nothing to Kali, who strips away the Beholder’s defences with barely a shudder. They pull up to the hidden part of the woods and El gets out and starts to run. She hopes it’s not too late. She hopes Kali’s advice isn’t too late-

But when she bursts into the ruined building down the road, she finds all the rest of the party in the first hallway. They all turn to look at her in amazement: Will is the first to move. He gathers her up in a hug - “Thank god,” he whispers in her ear - and the others soon follow. 

“Brenner took you?” Lucas questions furiously.

She nods. “I left him there. He has no power over me.”

“Good,” Mike says fervently. Then his gaze flicks up as the others appear behind her - Kali, Jonathan, Nancy, Steve. Nancy lets out a gasp of relief at the sight of him and hugs him tight.

Kali’s eyes are deadly serious. “However you think you’re going to end this, you’re going to do it wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Dustin questions, stepping closer. 

“We have to find the root,” El says softly. “In- in the Inbetween.”

“We have to go back in there,” Will says, in a quiet tone of realisation. “But it’s not safe-”

“We have to risk it.”

He nods. “I thought I could close it- stop it- from here. But I can’t. You’re right.”

“So what does that mean?” Lucas pushes.

“We go into the cave. But we don’t come out the other side. We find the root, like we tried to before.”

“What about your mom, and Mike’s mom and Hopper?” Max’s eyes are wide. “They went through the cave. They’re about to blow the whole thing up.”

“ _No,_ ” Kali hisses suddenly. “That cannot happen. You have to-” she addresses Will, “-you have to go in there first. If you try to close it from here…”

“It will just open further,” Mike says slowly. They all turn to stare at him. “I’ve been thinking. All the bad stuff - I mean the worst stuff, not- not the fake town et cetera - that started after Will teleported for the first time. Like right after. What if Will opened some sort of gate in the first place?”

“That’s how you brought the demogorgon here,” Jonathan says softly, and then winces as Will flinches. 

“I didn’t mean to-”

“We know you didn’t mean to,” Jonathan says. “It’s okay.” There’s no time for his patented long talks but these few words seem to have the same effect; Will nods, a little bit of fresh resolve in his eyes. 

“So Will needs to be able to go into the cave thing,” Nancy says. “So we need to stop Joyce and Hopper and my mom- what. Blowing it up? Was that your plan?”

“It was better than nothing,” Lucas says defensively.

“I’ll go after them.” There’s no uncertainty in Jonathan’s voice. “I’ll stop them from destroying it.”

“Jonathan-” Steve starts, but El can see that it’s useless. She knows that it’s useless. Jonathan looks after all of them, even Joyce. His mom. There’s no stopping him now.

“So- what. We don’t blow up the cave. We just- we just let Will go in there alone to face the Beholder?” Mike is frowning. 

El touches his hand. “Not alone,” she says quietly, insistently. “I will go.” And she looks at Kali, who nods- “And Kali too.”

“You really think this will work?” Max is chewing on her lip. “You really think…”

“Yes. Without me, you didn’t know, but with me-” Kali sighs. “I have done bad things. But I want to do better. I want to do better- Robin and Jane have taught me to do better. Which is why I can guide you through it. Through the Beholder’s visions. Without me you would get lost, but with me-”

“We stand a chance,” El whispers, looking at each of the group in turn, her eyes almost pleading. Kali has failed her before but El believes in her now, believes in her more than almost anything. Kali brought the Beholder into this world. She’s the one who can take it out again.

Finally, everyone nods. They have no better plan, after all. Blowing up the cave would be, as El has heard it called, a bandaid on a bullet wound. This is going to the source, like before. Like in the summer. Only they’re all very different now.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

El, Will, Kali, and Jonathan have been gone for less than ten minutes when there’s a screech in the distance and at once Dustin understands. “It’s coming to stop us. The demogorgon.”

“But I thought the demogorgon wasn’t-”

“Wasn’t flayed?” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t. But I think it is now.”

“The gap is widening,” Lucas says quietly. “The Mind Flayer’s getting through.”

“So we need to hurry up and finish this,” Steve says, crossing his arms. 

“If the demogorgon’s coming-”

“It is,” Dustin interjects.

Nancy glares at him before continuing: “If the demogorgon’s coming, then we need to be ready for it. We need to hold it off, so the others can finish this.”

“How do we do that? We don’t have any weapons or anything.”

Dustin nods. Max is right. Nancy has her handgun; Steve has his nailbat; Lucas has his wrist rocket. A few shovels, too. That’s it. That’s all they’ve got. But maybe… 

“Where’s the nearest gas station?” Lucas asks suddenly. Dustin knows where he’s going with this.

Steve and Nancy look at each other. None of them really know - none of them have lived here. But then Steve nods. “I think I saw one when I went to the high school. Maybe ten minutes from here? Why?”

“The Mind Flayer doesn’t like heat.”

Mike picks up the train of thought: “...so if we set this place on fire…”

“Just like last time,” Max says, eyes alight. “We can hold the demogorgon off.”

“That’s not-” Steve starts, and Dustin sighs. _Here we go_. Babysitter Steve, right back to worrying about _health and safety_ when they’re trapped in a dimensionally-altered town with a black hole at the center. He opens his mouth to express some of this but Steve beats him to the punch: “Okay.”

They all stare at him, even Nancy. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” He runs a hand through his hair. “You’re gonna do what me and Nancy tell you, and you’re gonna run when we tell you to run, but yeah. We’re at Defcon One right now. We gotta do something.”

Nancy smiles sideways at him, before turning back to the group. “Yeah, we do. I’ll go with Steve to the gas station and you _stay hidden_ until then, okay?” She looks at Mike, who’s stepped forward with fear in his face. “I’ll be okay. Don’t try and do anything stupid.” She hugs him. Dustin looks at Steve, suddenly realising quite how dangerous this is.

“Be safe,” he says. “Don’t- y’know, just- Come back.”

Steve grins, but it’s wobbly. He ruffles Dustin’s hair. “We’ll be fine. C’mon, we’ll be fine.”

“Good luck,” Max calls out, as they turn to go. 

“Thanks,” Steve says. And then they’re gone.

Dustin leans against the wall and chews his lip. They’re gonna be fine. He wishes he could have gone with them, though. He’s not very good at sitting down and doing nothing. With this thought, he starts to pace.

Max, Mike, and Lucas are all sitting on the floor. He paces a circuit of the hallway once, twice, three times, before Mike snaps, “Will you _stop pacing_ , for Christ’s sake. You’re not helping.”

“Yeah, and that’s the _problem_ , Mike! I’m not helping! We’re just sitting here, waiting-”

“Oh, how I’ve missed this,” Max quips, and Lucas snorts. Dustin stops pacing and glares at them - but at the open amusement in their faces, his annoyance slowly dies, and he finds himself smiling too. 

“I did miss you guys,” he admits. “While you were being _idiots._ ”

“Yeah, yeah, Dustin, we know.” Mike’s tone softens. “I missed you guys too.”

“Are you guys still gonna skip school after this?”

Max shrugs. “We’ll see. Is Lucas still gonna be a boring jock?”

Lucas pokes her in the side with his elbow. She yelps, laughter in the sound. “I’m not boring and you know it,” he says. “But- yeah. We’ll see. I don’t know- I don’t know how the whole thing’s gonna go.”

“I hope you stay,” Max says softly.

“I hope I do too.”

Dustin raises his eyebrows - clearly he’s missed something - but he doesn’t get the chance to respond, because suddenly there’s an audible _crash_ from the direction of the entrance and there’s only one thing that means. The others jump to their feet and Lucas is getting out his wrist rocket but there’s no time for that, so Dustin grabs him by the wrist and drags him around the next corner, towards the dark pit at the center of this place. Max and Mike follow and then they’re waiting there together, hearts racing, palms sweating. It isn’t meant to be here yet. Steve and Nancy aren’t back yet- god, what if it got them too? What if it got them first? What if-

“We need a plan,” Mike hisses. 

“I’m all ears, Wheeler,” Max snarls in response, her voice trembling just a little. 

“We can’t let it go after El and Will. So we have to stop it here. Without- without Steve and Nancy.” Dustin injects as much confidence into his tone as he can. “Or at least- stall it. Until they get back.”

“They might not come back,” Max says quietly. He swallows. 

“Concentrate,” Lucas says briskly. “Okay, I have my wrist rocket. Does anyone have _anything_ else?”

“The shovels, but… we can’t exactly bludgeon it to death with them.”

A long silence. Then Mike: “What if…” He’s frowning, concentrating hard. “What if we don’t _need_ to use them? What if we don’t need real weapons at all?”

“What are you _talking_ about?”

“What Nancy said, about Steve. About how he was able to say _no_ to the Beholder, and that got him out of the vision. And about how-”

“Perspective,” Dustin says, catching on. Maybe this can work. “How you view the illusion depends on how invested in it you are. How _you_ are more likely to see it. Which means we have some control over it.”

“And this whole town…”

“Are we sure?” Max whispers. “Are we sure that this whole town is- is constructed? Fake?”

“I trust Will,” Mike says. “And if he says that none of this is real…”

“So if this is all an illusion, and if we can control some element of the Beholder’s illusions, then…”

“Then maybe we can make weapons out of thin air. Maybe we can... Who knows what we can do.” 

“This is a massive gamble,” Lucas says. “A huge one. What if we’re wrong? What if we step out there and it doesn’t work? And even if it does, if we somehow _change_ the illusion to suit us, how do we know it would even be, like, physical?”

“Everything else here is,” Mike says quietly. “We have to try.”

Dustin holds his breath. They have to do this together, he knows that. If they’re not united now then they’ll never be, and they’ll probably die here. Lucas frowns, looks at the ceiling, then the floor, and then finally back at Mike. “Okay. Let’s try.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

“So what’s the plan?” Robin says to Murray, after the others have driven off into a dark town full of monsters. 

He narrows his eyes at her. “The plan, Miss Buckley, is to prevent shit hitting the proverbial fan if our wonderful troupe of heroes should happen to take too long in _pulling the plug._ ”

“Meaning?” Mr. Clarke asks, crossing his arms.

“Meaning, teach, that if any of the spooks escape the jaws of death back there before the mess with the town is sorted out, then our heroes are facing imminent evisceration.”

Robin thinks about it. She thinks about the cold calculation in the agents’ faces, about the way they clearly don’t care about the lives around them - just the bigger picture. She thinks she got a sense of that way back last week when she and Dustin broke into the old Lab - and doesn’t that feel a world ago now?

“They’re gonna nuke it,” Erica says bluntly, but Robin can hear the tremor in her voice. Seven months ago it was the Commies she was afraid of; now _You can’t spell America without Erica_ is no more.

“Ding ding ding.” Murray smiles grimly. “So we need to delay that process.”

Robin bites her lip and thinks. What can they do? This of course assumes that the men in the compound are the only ones with any power - after all, who’s to say there isn’t some general sitting somewhere far away safe on his ass with his finger hovering over the big red button? But maybe there isn’t. And if there isn’t, then they have to do something.

“We go back,” she says. “We go back and the second someone comes out of there-”

“We what? We kidnap him?” Mr. Clarke looks faintly green. His voice drops to a whisper. “We- we kill him?”

“Well, if it’s Dr. Martin dickswab Brenner…” Murray drawls, but then his face drops to serious again. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying-”

“You got recordings, right?” Robin interrupts, mind racing ahead. “You got recordings of phone calls and meetings and all that shady shit.”

“Yes, we did, but I hardly have time to go to the _New York Times_ with it. And the editing it requires…”

“You don’t need to,” she says. “You don’t need to do any of that. You just have to make them _think_ you’ve already done it.”

“But will they believe you? Couldn’t they simply take it as the bluff it is?” Mr. Clarke says hesitantly.

But Murray is shaking his head, eyes alive with something like gleeful excitement, like she’s convinced him. “Think about it. You’ve just been chased through a top secret military compound by a ravenous monster without a face. You’re probably wounded, all your prisoners have escaped, the Russian defector who could have been the key to the end of the Cold War is dead - the entire operation has been a colossal failure. And you’re faced with a crazy journalist who has evidence personally implicating you in institutional child abuse, torture, and all around crimes against humanity. The choice is yours: one call to your superiors asking them to hold off on hitting _fire_ , or permanent ruin and almost certain death, since there’s no way a nuke will stop an ageless eldritch being?”

A silence. Then, “So we’re doing this?”

“We’re doing this,” Murray confirms, with a tip of his head. 

She hopes it works. Or else they’re all dead.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When Karen comes back, it’s with a brief, tense smile, and, “Holly and Ted are fine.” Joyce gives her a brief, tense smile in return, before looking back at Hopper, who’s kneeling in the snow, binding two packages of some kind of explosive together. Direct action feels good, feels better than anything else. It’s about time they got to blow something up.

(She did get to blow something up, she thinks. Last summer. But she lost Hopper and gained nothing, nothing at all, because the gate was still open on the other side and all of it was a ploy, all of it, and she fell for it-)

She looks at the cave. Its black, world-swallowing darkness is watching her, making her skin prickle, but she refuses to look away. It’s a window, a window into another world - a no-world, every world - and she’s seen enough of those worlds to swallow something of her fear. But at any second it could reach out and swallow her, swallow _them_. She saved Hopper before - but she’s not sure she’s strong enough to stop it a second time. 

So she watches it warily, as Karen goes to Hopper’s side and helps him with whatever he’s doing. Not only is the cave - _it,_ the Beholder, the Mind Flayer too - an issue, but no doubt Chief Randall’s soon to be back with the cavalry and then they’re all fucking screwed. 

But they can’t think about that now. For now they have to-

“Mom!” 

She stiffens. Instinctively she finds herself probing the inside of her head, looking for the aching tenderness, the Beholder playing its games with her. Jonathan isn’t really here. She _knows_ he isn’t. Right? But as he steps out of the cave, hollow-eyed and desperate-looking, she realises he is.

“Jonathan?” she whispers. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t- you came through the cave? We could have-” She swallows hard. “We could have killed you.”

He steps towards her, takes her hands in his. Beyond him, Hopper and Karen have stilled, looking up at him curiously. “You can’t do this,” he says. “It won’t fix the problem.”

She stares at him. “What? How do you- how do you know?”

“Will is- is connected to it somehow. He has to go in there to close it. If he doesn’t…” He trails off, looks at the snowy ground, then back up at her. The desperation in his eyes - that’s real. All of this is real. The warmth of his fingers in hers, the faint ridge of the scar on his palm from the first time they had to do something drastic. “I don’t know. I don’t- but I trust them. Will, and El, and her sister-”

Hopper makes a low sound in the back of his throat. Joyce glances at him; he gets to his feet and moves towards them, frowning. “How do we know this isn’t another trick?” he says lowly, all his attention on Joyce. It’s clear he doesn’t believe that Jonathan is really here, not at all. His hand is on the Kalashnikov - slung carelessly over his shoulder, true, but still there. Still threatening. She thinks of the way he mowed down those Russians last year without a second thought, and her throat tightens. She moves in front of Jonathan.

“It’s not,” she says. “Hopper, it’s not. I mean I’m practically the expert here, aren’t I? I _know._ ”

“Yeah, but-” He glances at Jonathan, suspicion in his eyes. “It’s gotta try and defend itself, right? What if this is it? What if this is just… it playing with your mind?” 

She shakes her head. She doesn’t even have to search within herself to know the truth. She’s a mother and she knows - she _knows_ -

“It’s really him, Hop. We have to trust him. Youhave to trust him.” She swallows. “You have to trust _me_.”

He looks at her for a long, silent moment. This is it, isn’t it? The deciding second. The one where she discovers whether he’s really changed. 

(She needs him to have changed.)

Finally- 

“Okay,” he says, and there’s none of that sharpness in his voice, not anymore. It’s soft, and apologetic, and trusting. He trusts her. He _believes_ her. “We don’t blow up the cave.”

Behind her, Jonathan breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay, so-”

And then there’s a sound, like the striking of a match, and everything goes wrong. 

Karen is staring at the cave, a lost look in her eyes, as her hands move on what looks like their own accord. Joyce knows, without having to think, that _it_ ’s got her. It’s playing with her mind, showing her things that aren’t there, dragging her in - and worse than that.

It’s controlling her.

Because her hands are twitching over the explosive in her hands, and there’s a lighter between her fingers, and Hopper shouts _“Karen!”_ in a voice that booms across the silent trees but it’s no use, she can’t hear them, she’s not listening-

The lighter ignites-

Hopper grabs Joyce and yanks her backwards, away from the cave, his grip so tight it’s painful, but she can’t go, not when Jonathan’s there- not when he’s moving _towards_ Karen- why is he moving towards her- why is he-

He tears the explosive out of her hands and shoves her away from him and then Hopper drags Joyce to the ground and she can’t see what happens, only hears a sound so loud it deafens her and almost breaks out into silence. Then Hopper’s crushing weight lightens and she can get air into her lungs again, and she scrambles to her feet and looks back at the cave, to _Jonathan_ -

He’s not there. 

The trees are burnt away. Patches of underbrush are glowing with embers, small fires. It’s ash falling from the sky, not snow. And Jonathan is gone. _Jonathan is gone._

Karen picks her way towards them, eyes wide, bewildered. She’s mouthing words but Joyce can’t hear them over the pounding in her ears, the ringing from the explosion, the rushing of blood that always precedes a panic attack. She ignores her. She fixes her eyes on that cave, that dark, gaping maw. Empty. No Jonathan. This won’t work a second time. She knows it won’t. She’s never been lucky; after Hopper, whatever luck she had has run out. 

She feels Hopper’s hand on her arm. Roughly, she shrugs him off. She steps forward without knowing where she’s going; she just needs to be away. She needs… she needs… “Jonathan,” she whispers, hoarsely, and it sounds wrong to her ears, like it’s echoing inside her head. She steps forward again and her foot catches on something and she falls, hard, her knees landing in the wet slush, but she doesn’t get up. “Jonathan,” she says, again, and again, until she’s screaming it, great ugly sobs tearing their way up her throat and her chest caving in on itself.

Hopper touches her again and this time she lets him; this time she doesn’t have the strength to push him away. He touches her arm and then she twists and falls into him, her dead man walking, her resurrected. The one she killed and couldn’t save, though he survived anyway. But Jonathan-

_Jonathan-_

“Please,” she finds herself whispering. Begging. “Please- Jonathan-”

“Joyce,” Hopper says. She feels the rumble of his voice through his coat.

“I’ll do anything. Anything. Jonathan…”

But _anything_ won’t bring him back. 

Her whole body jerks at the thought, black bile crawling up her throat, but Hopper holds her tight so all she can do is cling to him as she trembles, her fingers numb with cold twisting in his coat, his hands all that keep her from falling to the ground. 

Jonathan came here to stop them doing this, he _volunteered_ , he shouldered the burden because that’s what he does, he shoulders the burden, he holds her up when she’s too weak to stand and he keeps the rest of them afloat as well and now-

Now he’s paid the price for that. 

And so has Joyce, because the universe- she owed it something. She owed it blood. She killed Hopper but Hopper survived and now it wants blood, and Lonnie wasn’t enough. Bob wasn’t enough, Lonnie wasn’t enough, her son’s peace of mind wasn’t enough, her own sanity wasn’t enough-

At least, in this world. 

And as soon as the thought flickers across her mind, she remembers that other world, the one she saw in the corridor yesterday, the one where her house is warm and full of sunlight and her sons still have smiles on their faces. The one where maybe they can still be happy. The one where she can give back to Jonathan the life he deserved all this time, the life where his college application is lying half-filled out on the kitchen table, the life she couldn’t give him.

Maybe-

Just maybe-

And this is why it showed that to her, she knows, she knows and doesn’t care. Because she can fix this, can’t she? She can have him back. She can fix all her horrible mistakes. 

She closes her eyes.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Will runs through so many golden hallways, jungles filled with violence, icy Russian plains that never end- blood dripping down white sinks and bruises on the faces of mothers, of brothers- a cattle prod instead of a crayon given to a girl with a shaven head- that he can no longer tell whose memory is whose. It’s a jumbled mess in his own head, let alone everyone else’s, so all he can do is focus his gaze and never slow down. He can’t stop or he’ll be lost. He can’t look back or he’ll be lost-

_“If he looked back, he’d lose her.”_

_Will looks over at El, lying on her bed under her_ Wonder Woman _poster and staring at the ceiling, with a frown. “What?”_

_She sits up and looks at him. “The story of Orpheus and Eurydice. She was stolen by the god of death and Orpheus went to get her back, and the god let him, but only if she walked behind him on the way out and he never looked back to check if she was there. If he did, she’d have to stay there forever. He’d lose her.”_

_“And did he?”_

_She nods solemnly. “He couldn’t help it.”_

_“And why are you telling me this?”_

_“Oh, I was just reading about it in class earlier and it stuck in my-”_

“This isn’t real,” he realises, getting up off his bed. El looks up at him sharply. With a jolt he remembers his mom, dying bloody on the ground in that vision, and he steps away from her. Who knows if she - this pale, false vision of her - has her powers. Who knows if she’ll hurt him. Because it’s not really her, because he lost her and Kali in here a while ago, and it’s frightening how strong the Beholder is. It won’t give up, not without a fight.

He backs away from not-El as fast as he can, as she gets to her feet and begins to advance. Her eyes are dull and dead. She raises her hand just as he reaches the door and flings himself out of it-

He lands not in the corridor outside their room but somewhere else. The woods. The air is calmer here, less dense, less oppressive. He feels less like reality is about to crumble and fade around him, or mutate into something else. Maybe he’s finally beyond the Beholder’s reach.

But as he thinks this, he recognises the woods, and hears a voice through the trees, and recognises that he hasn’t won yet. 

“-fuck’s sake, kid, it’s not something to cry about. Crying makes you weak, you realise that? If you ever wanna be strong like your dad you gotta _man up_ , you hear me? _Man up._ ” 

Will turns to see his dad leaning over a little kid, a four-year-old Will, all fluffy brown hair and huge, red-rimmed eyes and hand-me-down clothes that are way too big and way too shabby but all his mom can ever afford to give him. His dad’s words just make him cry harder and Lonnie lets out a _sigh_. 

“I’m not having this, pal. I won’t have you going around embarrassing me. I won’t have them saying my kid’s a fag, alright? I won’t. So man the fuck up.”

Young Will nods tearily; now Will shakes his head. _You’ve done nothing to make me want to be your father._ Things never got better from here, even though he tried and tried and tried. They just got worse. 

“You’re still a fag, huh. Despite your dad’s best efforts.”

He turns. The woods have changed; golden evening sunlight is filtering through bare branches, casting shadows on snow. Tony is walking towards him, hands in his pockets, unruffled and gorgeous in the glowing light. 

“Guess I am,” Will says, feeling a sudden ache in his chest. Tony, god, _Tony_ -

“ _Dad issues, I bet,_ ” Tony parrots with a smirk. “Me too.”

“You too?”

He steps closer. “Me too.”

They’re so close Will can see his dark eyelashes, see the tiny mole on the side of his jaw, see the chapped groove in his lip-

Will can still hear his dad talking behind him. Saying all the worst things, the things that he carries scarred on his heart, written there for anyone and everyone to see if they were to slice him open like Hopper did to his fake corpse. He doesn’t want to hear them. He wants to bury himself in this, in Tony’s warm eyes, in the warm sunlight trickling through the trees-

But he can’t.

Because there’s something dead here, too. 

So he turns away, back towards his father, because suddenly he knows where this is coming from. He knows what this is. He turns away and he hears Tony call his name - “Will!” - but he doesn’t look back. _Don’t look back_ , and that’s El’s voice, soft in his ear. And it’s not Tony he’ll lose, because he lost Tony already, never had Tony in the first place- 

It’s El. It’s El, and Jonathan, and Mom, and Mike and Lucas and Dustin and Max and Steve and Nancy and Robin and Erica and Murray and Hopper-

He walks up to his dad, who looks down at him with his lip curled in contempt. “You’ve done nothing to make me want-” he starts, the old words, but Will shakes his head.

“No,” he says. ( _Only this time, I didn’t run. This time, I stood my ground. I just looked at Mr. Baldo and his stupid face and I said go away. Go away!_ ) _“No,”_ he says again, and it’s only then that he finally feels it. 

The shadow.

The missing piece of the puzzle. He hasn’t felt it all along, this whole time, not once-

And now his skin crawls, and his feet are rooted to the ground, frozen, as the shadow takes over his father’s face, as it looms up above him and he feels so, so small, desperate to run, like it’s going to rip into him again, take him over, _I felt it everywhere_ -

“No,” he says. 

( _Just like that. He was gone.)_

The trees and the light and the shadow disappear. He finds himself on his knees with a sinking feeling in his chest, a feeling like this is all his fault. Because now that he’s felt the shadow monster again he can feel it _always_ , polluting every memory, _within_ every memory, and he thinks there’s a reason it took his dad’s face. If Kali brought the Beholder here, then-

Then he probably brought the Mind Flayer.

His hands touch the ground and he feels cold, hard rock. When he looks up, the horizon is so far away he feels dizzy for a moment, before he registers that it’s the lake. He’s looking out over the lake. He’s kneeling on that dark spur of rock that juts out into the harbor, gritty and frozen, and true enough when he looks up he sees that white, skeletal lighthouse looming above him, cutting into the heavy gray ceiling of clouds.

Why is he here?

He gets to his feet and looks around. Everything is quiet and still, the black water sucking gently at the stone, the wind barely there. _The eye of the storm_ , he thinks. He’s made it. 

He looks at the lighthouse. There’s a rusty white ladder beneath it, leading up into its dark belly, and it’s almost without thinking that he lets his feet take him towards it. He wraps his fingers around the closest rung and winces at the cold, but he knows this is where he has to go. He knows this is where he’ll find what he’s looking for. So he climbs, tentatively at first, before a sense of urgency overtakes him and he climbs faster. The air is freezing, and every so often there’s a violent wave that crashes and sends icy spray to shock his skin, but he keeps going. He leaves the ground behind him and soon enough there’s an open trapdoor above his head; he climbs through it.

-and immediately he senses something different. 

The room, a single, large, circular room, is dark. So dark he can barely see the walls. It’s sheltered from the cold, so much that he can’t feel much of the temperature at all - like he’s stepped out of the world for a moment. Reality feels altered here. He takes a step forward and strains his eyes to see into the dark-

And then he knows, without having to see, that it’s here. In the dark with him. All around him. He sucks in a breath as he feels it _uncurling_ itself- he’s grateful for the black because he knows it’s something awful- unfathomable- unbearable- 

Will Byers, it says. It’s not a voice he hears, but rather one he feels. Feels in the back of his head, in the base of his spine. But it’s not angry, not like before. It’s quieter, with a strange quality of stillness. Even _defeat._ It’s flayed, he remembers. Is he talking to the shadow monster, or the Beholder itself? Has he broken through that far?

It makes a sound, then, something indescribable but close to that of a wounded animal, cowering in a corner to die. 

“He got you,” Will says quietly. “The shadow monster, he…”

There’s a long, full silence. He risks moving closer, deeper into the dark. Then he feels _something_ brush against his mind. He jumps back, heart pounding in his chest, before gritting his teeth and moving forward again. He has to do this. He has to do something.

“What if I set you free?” he whispers. Because he knows he could. This, here, is the last essence of the Beholder, curled up to die inside its own mind. The Mind Flayer’s storm is raging outside it but in here, in here- “Would you help us?”

The Beholder, huge and endless and impassive, says nothing. If he strains to see hard enough, he can glimpse many different things glinting wetly in the dark, like eyes. It’s watching him, yes, and everything else. It sees everything, isn’t that what his mom said? If it sees everything then why should it care about one little town in Minnesota? Why should it care about- about a fourteen-year-old fag whose father never loved him, and his family who can barely afford to keep the lights on? Why should it _bother?_

“If I set you free,” he says, forcing all the resolve he has left into his voice, “then I want you to kill him.”

Another yawning mouth of silence. He holds his breath. But there’s no answer - the _thing_ remains impassive, silent. He has to take a gamble, then. He has to choose. The Mind Flayer, or the Beholder? Evil, or _everything?_

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Steve’s car won’t start. He tries it desperately, gritting his teeth as the engine whirs and grinds and splutters with no success. Eventually he gets out and slams his fist on the roof, and then winces. Nancy watches him silently, gripping her gun so tightly her hand has cramped. Finally, she moves towards him and touches his arm. “Steve,” she says. “We need another plan.”

He looks at her. He’s afraid, she sees. Really afraid. But so is she. So are they all.

“We don’t have time to walk to the gas station. So let’s-” She looks around helplessly. Just the empty streets, darkened houses. “Let’s…”

“Check the houses,” he says quietly. “Who knows, maybe one of them has a gas canister lying around in the backyard.”

She nods. They cross the street to the closest house, which looks empty just like all the others. She kicks the flimsy gate open and heads down the side passage, holding her gun out in front of her, heart pounding in her chest. But the yard, when they reach it, is empty. There’s a rusty swing creaking in the corner next to a shed and overgrown weeds are poking through the snow. When she turns to look back at the house, she sees decay creeping up its walls. It’s been empty for a long while.

“Nancy,” Steve whispers. Something in his tone makes her stomach sink. She turns to see him crouched over something buried in the snow. Slowly, she walks towards him and kneels beside him. “Jesus, Nancy-”

It’s a corpse. Half-skeletal, graying husks of skin still hanging off the frame. And it’s _tiny._ A _child._

Steve pulls away from her suddenly and gets to his feet; she doesn’t look, but she hears him retching in the snow. She herself is transfixed in horror, frozen. She’s thinking about Holly, about how this kid, whoever they were, was Holly’s age- is, now and forever- how she left Holly in Hawkins chasing her own obsessive dreams and the Beholder is _in_ Hawkins, and it could so easily do to Holly what it did to this kid because it killed them, didn’t it, when it took over the town it killed them all just like it killed Lonnie and used his image as a puppet and Nancy _left her in Hawkins_ -

She feels ill then. But she doesn’t move. She stares at the ragged, decayed corpse in the snow and then her face hardens with iron resolve. No more stupid plans. No more running off and making a mess. “We have to get back to the kids,” she says. “We have to- I’m not letting it get them. I’m _not.”_

“Okay,” Steve says. Something drops on the snow beside her, and when she looks she sees it’s a canister of gasoline. The door of the shed, behind him, is open. “Let’s do this.”

She clenches her jaw and nods. He offers a hand to help her to her feet and then they hurry back down the street, back down towards the old building, towards the kids. God, what if- what if they’re too late- what if Mike is a huddled shape on the floor like that _child_ -

“Nancy,” Steve says. She blinks, and then follows his eyes. They haven’t yet rounded the corner towards the building but when she looks through the trees at it-

Fire.

A great orange glow lighting up the woods, the snow turning to ashy puddles ahead, smoke drifting through the air around them. For a moment it’s like everything has turned upside down and backwards, because they’re _bringing_ the gas, they’re here to light the fire, but it’s on fire already?

“Fire,” she whispers numbly, and starts to run. 

“Nancy!” Steve shouts behind her, but she doesn’t stop. She has to save the kids. She has to- she has to-

When she reaches the entrance she tugs the neck of her turtleneck up over her nose and mouth against the smoke, and ducks inside. She sees no one, just a haze of orange and heat that makes sweat prick at her back and on her temples, until three corridors down where suddenly she’s face to face with both a wall of fire and a looming, angry white shape right in the middle of it, that turns to her and _snarls-_

A hand on her arm drags her back into some sort of closet. She yelps and turns furiously to find Mike, alive, unhurt, staring at her with frantic eyes. Max, Lucas, and Dustin are crowded beside him. “The- the demogorgon-” she grits out. “The fire- We have to- to run-”

He shakes his head. “It’s us.”

“What?” she stares at him.

“The fire, the realities- we can change them. Control them.” This is Lucas, whose tone is deadly serious. 

Dustin steps forward: “Like with the perspective in the Beholder’s visions.”

This is… no way. There are limits. There have to be limits. She takes a deep breath. The air tastes less smoky now, and is it her or is it slightly cooler? Mike and Max exchange a panicked look and Max peers out of the closet, returning with Steve in tow and fear in her face.

“The fire’s out.”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit-” Dustin begins to pace in the cramped space, brushing past Nancy and forcing her closer to the wall. 

“I don’t understand,” she says, as Steve says, “Okay, what the fuck have you little shits managed to do now?”

“We started a fire with the power of our minds, Steve, keep up!”

 _“What?”_ he hisses, as Max’s eyes widen and something like realisation comes into her face. 

“It’s them. They don’t think they should be seeing it, so they’re not. So it’s getting weaker.”

Steve scoffs. “Oh, don’t give me any _believe in fairies_ crap, this whole thing has been insane enough for one day-”

“Steve,” Nancy snaps, and he goes quiet. Her mind is racing, trying to catch up. Because maybe- maybe they’re right. Perspective. She did work that out, didn’t she? The idea that they can influence whatever the Beholder shows them. And if this whole town is something the Beholder is showing them…

“Do you trust me?” Mike says, looking her deep in the eyes. He’s taller than her now, but that protective instinct hasn’t gone away. Won’t ever go away. But still-

“Yes,” she says. “I trust you.”

He takes her hand and leads her out into the hallway. The demogorgon is turned away from them, for now. The floor is glowing with embers but that’s all they are - embers. Then Mike squeezes her hand and whispers, “Concentrate.”

She closes her eyes. She hears the slosh of liquid - Steve pouring the gasoline over the floor. She thinks about fire.

And the room ignites.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

El is watching a young, clean-shaven Hopper cradling his newborn baby daughter when she feels a flicker of heat on her face and realises something is wrong. It was a mistake to tarry here, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. The peace in his eyes, the sheer overwhelming love brimming out of him-

It feels like she’s ripping that away from him to go. But she has to go. She kisses her index finger and presses it to Sara’s soft, tiny forehead, and then she turns away into the dark. 

She lost Will a while back. Kali, too. She’s been chasing nothing through these visions for what seems like forever. But something is different now. She feels a bead of sweat slide down the back of her neck and into her flannel, tastes something acrid and vile at the back of her throat. It’s like the time at the end of the summer, right before they moved out of Hawkins, when they had a bonfire in the backyard to burn all the trash they couldn’t sell and couldn’t take with them. It was one of the few times she cried after Hopper, she remembers. She remembers throwing the teddy bear he gave her on the fire and then snatching it out less than a second later, scorching her hands so badly they hurt for days. And sleeping in Joyce’s bed that night, while they both cried each other to sleep. It’s the same rough heat now, the same smoky blaze. A fire.

And as she thinks it, she knows that it’s true, and she knows that if she turns around she’ll be out of the cave and she’ll lose her chance to go after Will, to help him. But Will is stronger than her now, she knows this too, and he can do this on his own. The others are in danger. _Fire._ Maybe she can help them.

She turns around.

The darkness fades away into dull smoke. She coughs and splutters on it, stumbling forward through the haze, down the corridor until she rounds the corner and she finds-

Mike. On the floor, like he’s been thrown back. Cowering beside him are Dustin and Steve- Nancy, Max, and Lucas are at the other side, blocked off by a raging wall of flames- and in the middle-

In the middle is the demogorgon.

She swallows hard. Her mouth tastes like ash. It’s tall, barely flinching at the fire raging around it, looming and white. Angry and feral. She can’t do this. There’s nothing she can do. She doesn’t have her powers - does she? 

It snarls in Dustin’s direction and she steps forward. Maybe she does. She can find people again now, can’t she? She has to try. She has to-

“No,” she says quietly. It hears her. It swings its bulbous head around to face her and she sucks in a breath as she tries to hold her ground. She’s been here before. She’s faced the monster before, and raised her arm, and yelled until it dissolved into ash. She can do this. 

She raises her arm.

She raises her arm and the hallway isn’t silent but it feels like it is, it feels like they’re all watching her, waiting for something. Even the demogorgon is waiting. She can feel the flickering heat of the flames on her face and she has to do something _now_ because it’s only getting hotter and if the demogorgon doesn’t get them then the fire will-

Something bursts in her nose, a bright spark of pain, and she feels hot blood drip down her face. But the demogorgon still stands, whole, vicious, alive, and she’s failed.

It draws itself up to its fullest height. It reaches for her, one white clawed hand, and for a moment it’s not the demogorgon at all. For a moment it’s Papa, reaching for her, ready to take her away again, like he always did, like he did from her Mama the day she was born- 

There’s a dull thud. Blood sprays. The demogorgon slumps down. Then another thud- and another-

She raises her eyes to see Lucas on his feet, a bloodied shovel raised above his head, the demogorgon’s skull crushed and mangled on the floor before him- _dead._

Gone. The demogorgon is gone.

(Papa is gone-!)

“El- El, are you okay?” Mike is asking frantically, rushing to meet her with his hands on her arms. She nods distractedly, eyes on the demogorgon and Lucas above it, still wielding the shovel, still with something equally brave and equally terrified in his eyes. 

“Thank you,” she whispers to him.

He blinks, then smiles a little, wiping blood off his cheek. “No problem.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Joyce opens her eyes to sunlight.

The air is warm, just the bearable edge of humid, summer flies flitting in and out of her vision. She’s in the woods, and everything is green and golden. Slowly she sits up, glimpsing crystalline sky behind the leaves of the canopy above her. The earth beneath her is dry and warm when she crumbles it between her fingers. The moment is alive, like a heart beating under the surface of the world. She gets to her feet and breathes in living air.

There are voices in the distance, faint, carried to her by the warm breeze that lifts her hair and stirs the trees. She follows the sound, picking her way across the underbrush. Above her, a bird is fluttering among the branches. She looks up at it and smiles.

And then the trees begin to thin out into an open sunny field, and a river, and her boys at the edge of it, the water glittering around them. She starts to walk towards them and then stops in the middle of the field, the long grass brushing her thighs, crickets chirping in the summer silence. She just looks at them for a minute, the feeling of calm in her chest familiar but not, like something coming home from a long stay away. They’re laughing, Jonathan leaning back on his elbows on the pebbled shore, Will standing knee-deep in the rippling water and skipping stones. Everything is light and airy. They could do anything, she thinks. Go anywhere under this crystalline sky. It covers them like a cocoon, keeps them safe. And they are safe here. They’re happy.

“Is it everything you thought it would be?” 

She turns. For a second she’s looking at her mother, her mother as she was in photo albums, as Joyce barely remembers her - small, long-haired, green-eyed. In stature Joyce looks like her but their faces are all different. But it isn’t her mother at all. Her hair is short, Joyce sees, her eyes sharp. She’s dressed like she was in that dream, as she was when everything went wrong for her, in that apron dusted with flour.

“Aunt Darlene,” she says. 

“Is it?” Darlene doesn’t move, just looks at her, standing still in the long swaying grass. “Is it everything you dreamed of?”

“Yes,” Joyce says, looking back at her children. “Yes, it is.”

Darlene steps forward and tucks a stray strand of hair behind Joyce’s ear. “So grown up,” she murmurs. “So pretty. Prettier than Elizabeth.”

Her throat tightens at the mention of her mother. “I miss her,” she admits.

“I do too,” Darlene says gently. “But some things-” Her eyes rest on the boys by the river. “Some things can’t be undone.”

“But-”

There’s a faint burst of music from the shore. Joyce turns to see Will crouched over his backpack with his Walkman in his hands, The Clash playing tinnily from it. She sees them both grin. 

     _Should I stay or should I go now?_  
_If I go, there will be trouble_  
_And if I stay it will be double_  
_So come on and let me know_

She turns back to Darlene, who’s watching with unreadable eyes. “They didn’t believe us,” Darlene says quietly, and the words echo around them, even in empty air. “They never believed us. And that made it all so much harder.”

Joyce stares at her for a long, silent moment. The music is still playing faintly behind them; she can hear Will singing along. Another breath of wind sweeps across the field and tangles her hair. She feels it should be cold, but it’s not. Still warm, still beating with the vitality of a heart. 

“But that doesn’t mean we should take the easy way out.”

The music stops. Joyce sucks in a breath and turns to the kids instinctively, afraid that something’s happened, but they’re still there- 

And when she turns back, it’s Darlene who’s gone. The field before her is empty. 

“Aunt Darlene?” she tries, and then she looks back again and her eyes widen. Will and Jonathan are standing side by side facing her, only a few yards away. Their faces are distant, smiling but distant, vague. She wants to hold them in her arms. She wants to melt into them and go back to the shore by the river- she wants to feel the water rushing around her and know that she won’t fall-

“Jonathan,” she says. He looks at her silently. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She takes a step forward. But then there’s the ghost of a hand on her arm and she stops as Darlene whispers in her ear: _“Remember what’s real.”_

Remember what’s real. She remembers the agony in Will’s face as she burnt a monster out of him; she remembers the yell Jonathan let out when he shoved Karen to the side and took the force of the blast himself. That, all that pain and all that suffering, that’s real. This, the sun and the sky, the field and the river and her sons’ smiles-

Does it matter?

She’s always chased dreams. In high school she wanted to get out any way she could, any way she knew how, she wanted to _be_ something and all she ended up being was Lonnie’s wife but she stayed that way for a long time, too long, because she had hope that maybe it wasn’t as bad as she felt it was. And then that choice was made for her, in the end, and dreaming? 

The word tastes like something crawling up her throat. It’s bad, now. It hurts. Because dreaming hasn’t treated her very kindly - nothing has - and this is a dream but it’s also a surrender-

But Jonathan wouldn’t want her to surrender.

She was weak and that cost him his childhood. And if she’s weak now- if she leaves Will, and El- she always wanted a daughter- and Hopper, freshly risen from the dead-

Jonathan. He’s so close to her now, under the field’s golden sun. So close she could reach out, so close she could fold into his arms and not tell him about the bad dreams she’s been having because he’s her son and he shouldn’t have to know-

She has to be strong for Jonathan.

She has to be strong for Jonathan.

She turns away.

And the air changes. Something _snaps._ Something’s angry, uncurling in the shadows. It’s filled with _rage._ Because it wants her, and it’s been so close, so many times- It _wants_ her-

She’s watching blood drip down her arm; she’s watching Lonnie shove her against the wall and tell her she’s worthless, she’s _nothing_ ; Hopper is fading away from her, shaving his head and getting the bus to go far, far away, just like before when his dad hit his mom and everyone knew and they left and got divorced, but Lonnie hit Joyce and no one ever knew or else they never cared because they were nothing, always nothing, just like no one cared when Will went missing because he was nothing, Lonnie’s kid, nothing more than _nothing_ and she’s so tired of that word-

 _I’m not afraid of you_ , she says in her head, but she knows it hears her. _Show me whatever you want. I’ve seen worse. I’ve_ lived _worse._

    whatif you could **fix i** t?

The voice grinds out between her ribs; it’s like a black well opening up in her chest. But she shakes her head. _I can’t. No one can. Not even you._ She feels a hot tear race down her cheek, and her next words come out as a sob: “And we all have to live with that.”

There’s a long, silent moment of darkness. She feels it watching her, thinking, if it even has to think. If the endless span of universes leave any room for thought. And then the black peels away with a feeling of almost respect- almost _surrender-_ and she glimpses Will, standing alone in front of some hideous great shape, towering and awful, that makes her eyes hurt- he looks at her gently, and says, “It’s okay. I got this,” and she stares at him as he seems to move further away-

And another shape joins him. One that’s so, so familiar, one she’d know anywhere, even in death-

Jonathan joins his brother as she opens her eyes and sucks in a breath of air so cold it hurts, so real it hurts, and jerks out of Hopper’s arms and lets another sob pour out of her, for everything she’s lost, for everything she might not have lost after all.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Jonathan awakens to darkness and little else. 

For a long moment he believes he’s dead. Surrounded by so much _nothing_ , with his last memory grabbing the explosive off Nancy’s fucking mom and launching himself towards the cave, it’s not an unreasonable assumption. But he doesn’t believe in life after death, much less purgatory, so he regards the empty black with suspicion.

He gets to his feet. Beneath him is a rippling black surface. The dark is endless, silent, dead. No one and nothing. What is he doing here? 

It occurs to him suddenly that he’s in the void, the same void he’s heard El talk about, the _inbetween._ He tries calling out: “Hello?” but there’s no response. Just the same echoing silence.

He thinks about El. He thinks about Will. He thinks about how they’re trying to stop the Beholder and how it shouldn’t be their job at all because they’re _kids,_ they’re only fourteen, this shouldn’t be their burden to bear. And he’s failed them in letting it be their burden. And so has his mom, really. She’s failed them all. But he can’t hold that against her. Not after everything. She tries. He wishes he could help her more. He wishes he could help them all more.

-and now he’s here. 

If this really is El’s void, then maybe there’s something he can do. Maybe-

He closes his eyes and concentrates hard. He thinks about El and Will, he thinks about what they set out to do, what they set out to destroy. He thinks so hard his head begins to ache but on some vague hunch he thinks that maybe, just maybe, this will work. And then he feels _something_ thrumming around him. It hangs in the air and he holds his breath, hoping maybe it won’t get to him. But it does.

    Jon **athan.**

He tenses. The voice is like nothing he’s ever heard before - like nothing on earth. 

    Jonathan, you want **better than thi** s, don’t you?

He swallows painfully. It’s coaxing, persuasive. Unbidden, images flash across his mind of his mom, blotchy-eyed at the kitchen table refusing breakfast, of Will pushing them all away when he needed them most, of El refusing to speak for days on end. He does want better than that. For all of them. 

-but not the way this voice wants it. He knows instinctively it would be _wrong._ He knows it from years spent begging for better from his father and never receiving it; he knows it from years spent driving his brother to school and working for groceries and talking his mother down from panic attacks. He knows worse, and that’s why it’s clear to him that anything _better_ that this voice is offering is nothing more than a pipe dream. A false hope.

This is why it didn’t come for him, he realises, as the voice retreats. Because it knew it wouldn’t win.

-and then the darkness opens up before him and he’s looking at a gray spit of rock, and a lake, and a lighthouse, and it takes him only a second before he registers the ladder and he begins to climb. Icy wind whips his face but he ignores it; then he’s through a trapdoor and into a pitch-black room and there’s _Will._

“Will,” he says.

Will turns. His eyes are wide and scared, shining in the gloom. “Jonathan?” he whispers, half hopeful, half resigned, like he’s not sure he’s real.

Jonathan moves towards him. “What’s going on?” he asks, and as he asks it he feels that they’re not alone in the room. Something impossible is lurking in the shadow just beyond the light. 

“The Beholder,” Will says. “I think- I think I can let it go. I can _un-flay_ it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that- that it can do what it wants. The Mind Flayer will be weakened again but the Beholder is- is different. Much stronger. I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

Jonathan looks at him in the dark, not daring to look beyond him. Is this a good idea? The Beholder, huge and incomprehensible. The Mind Flayer, hideously evil. The Beholder could crush them like ants but he doesn’t think it would _try_ to. It simply doesn’t care. And maybe- maybe releasing it would help. Maybe it would thank them.

He remembers a phone call, a week ago now. He remembers Nancy’s shaky breathing down the line, and the way he told her to _do_ something, and maybe that wasn’t the right course then but now-

Now, it might be. Because he’s still tired of rolling over and doing nothing. Still tired of being on the defence. Still tired of picking up early shifts, late shifts, whatever shift he can manage, while his family barely survives. He doesn’t want a better life handed to him. He wants to _take_ it.

“Do it.”

Will stares at him. “What if it… what if-”

He shakes his head. “We have to make this choice.” It’s the only choice, the only choice they can make, because they have to do _something_ and this is the only something they can do.

Will swallows. Then he turns, back to the dark, reaching out a hand, and then he fades out of view as Jonathan opens his eyes to snow, and the taste of ash on his tongue, and the sound of sobbing, and sobbing, and sobbing. He lies there for a moment, the instinct to go back to Will too strong to ignore, but he can’t reach him. Will is on his own now. 

Slowly, he gets to his feet. He’s in the mouth of the cave. Snow is falling steadily through the burnt, ashen trees. He spots Karen first, kneeling helplessly in the muddy slush, then Hopper, reaching out to someone-

His mom, crying, her hands twisted in the dirt. She looks so small, so lonely. He’s reminded of the day his father left, left for real, and how when he and Will came back inside in the early hours, dripping with rain and muscles aching from lifting the branches that made up Castle Byers, they found her sitting on the floor against the kitchen cabinets with ashtray overflowing and an emptiness in her eyes. He takes a step towards her.

But this isn’t like that, he sees when he gets closer. He doesn’t know how but somehow-

She seems lighter. He hadn’t noticed it before but now that it’s gone he knows it was there - this dark cloud of _something._ And it’s gone. Like she’s free.

He takes another step. “Mom,” he whispers, and she looks up.

There’s a long moment of silence. There’s blood on her face again (why is there always blood on her face?). She stares at him almost in disbelief. Her lips move, sound out his name silently. And then she’s surging to her feet but he gets there first, crushing her into a hug so tight he feels her gasp. 

“You were gone,” she whispers. “You were gone, you were gone, you were gone-”

“I’m here now,” he says.

She pulls back and cups his face in her hands. Her eyes are brimming with tears but her face, for the first time in a long time, is hopeful. “I’m sorry,” she says. “For all of it. For being such a fucking horrible mother. For not being able to fix any of it.”

He shakes his head. “None of us can fix any of it.”

Her eyes widen, then, and he turns, following her gaze, to look at the cave. Hopper and Karen have got to their feet and are looking at it too, suspicion in the way they’re standing, but Jonathan knows better. This is Will.

The air _shimmers._

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Will, facing the Beholder alone in the dark, reaches out.

His hand touches something. It’s so cold it sends a flood of pain down his arm but he doesn’t move away - he can’t. He stands there and lets himself feel, feel it all, feel everything. Glimpses of what his mom saw, glimpses of other worlds, better and worse. _Everything._ He takes a deep breath and lets everything he sees flood through him, lets his mind blend with its mind until he’s full of one emotion, all-consuming, just one:

_Rage._

The Beholder’s anger is his own as it strains against the prison the Mind Flayer has kept it in; it’s timeless and incomprehensible to him, really, but in it he finds echoes of himself. Anger for everything that was stolen, like the remains of his childhood, like a normal fucking life, taken not only from him but from his family too, his friends, El…

Usually he feels these things as despair but now he’s got the Beholder in his blood and all of its untamed, ageless fury. He’s not afraid anymore. He’s not afraid and, as one, he and the Beholder turn away from the dark and into the light. The world tears like paper. All around them is blinding white, the emptiness of everything, like all the worlds have been flattened into one. 

He stares up at the white, endless sky, and feels it inside his head. It doesn’t say anything. The rage is still there, burning and simmering under his skin, alien in his blood, but there’s almost _hesitation_ in it. It waits like it’s considering him, like it’s thinking, like it’s… asking him what he wants?

He doesn’t say it. But he thinks about the shadow monster, about everything he did to Will, to all of them. The violation of having him in his head without permission. He thinks about what he’d like to do to the Mind Flayer; what he can’t do on his own.

And just like that, the Beholder goes.

It tugs itself out of his body; he feels a rush of cold air on his face. Then a huge shadow rises up in front of him and he closes his eyes against it, because he knows that whatever it looks like isn’t something he wants to see. 

Something throws him backwards and he lands hard on the ground, screwing his eyes shut against whatever’s going on above him. The world _shudders_. And then-

    _**Will.**_

He stiffens. Something else is pressing inside his head now, but it’s not the Beholder. It’s more familiar than that. It’s _him._

    _**Will. Help . You can help .**_

The shadow monster is afraid. His voice in the back of Will’s head is weak and desperate. The Beholder is choking him, cutting him out of the world, and for a moment Will feels a strange sense of loyalty towards him - he brought the monster here, after all. This is his fault. His own personal demon. 

And that demon needs to die.

So he shakes his head with his eyes still closed, and then there’s a horrible agonised roar that rattles up his spine and through his teeth. He curls up on his side as the clamor and the violence passes over his head-

Then suddenly there’s silence, and it’s over.

He doesn’t dare open his eyes. But then there’s a touch on his arm and he starts, looking up into Kali’s dark eyes. She found him. “You freed it,” she whispers. “How did you-”

He shakes his head, slowly getting to his feet. He doesn’t dare look behind him; her eyes are rapturous. Instead he looks over the white plain, the sheer weight of nothingness. This is the true inbetween, unpoisoned by the darkness of the shadow’s evil. “I just did what I had to. It killed the Mind Flayer.”

She looks at him with admiration - admiration and sorrow. “Well done,” she says. “And now I- I’m going to do what I have to.”

She’s still looking over his shoulder; he frowns, feeling a chill of foreboding creep into his chest. “What?”

“The Beholder can’t stay here. It spared you once, but it’s hungry. It won’t spare you again.” She swallows. “I have to get rid of it.”

“Kali-” 

“This is my mess. There’s not much any of us can fix in this world, and I can’t fix any of the damage it did. But I can prevent it doing any more.”

He thinks about El, so pleased to see her sister, about the way Robin clung to Kali like a lifeline. She’s talking like she’s going away, like this is a sacrifice she’s about to make, and Will doesn’t want her to. After everything, shouldn’t it be _him?_

But he can’t stop her as she walks past him, chin held high. He can’t stop her as she faces the dark mass piled up on the bones of all the futures there ever were, and he can’t stop her as she raises her hand. His self control slips and he turns to look just as the _thing_ swallows her up and the white explodes into glaring shards of color so bright it burns his eyes.

And when the spots on his vision slowly fade, they fade to gray flakes of snow drifting down from the sky, and gray water lapping at the stone, and a gray town blinking in the light like an animal waking up from a long hibernation. Slowly he sits up and takes it in. 

Eaden.

It’s still there, looking much the same as before. But it’s not so empty now.

He watches people on the shore, distant pinpricks of color, drift hazily across the streets like they don’t quite know where they are, like they’re waking up out of a dream. 

He can’t find it within himself to be scared. He gets to his feet and walks over the rock around the bay, barely aware of his surroundings - until he reaches the sidewalk and nearly collides with a passer-by. He jumps; the kid gives him a suspicious look; he has to do a double take. 

It’s Darren. 

“Darren, hi,” he says tentatively. Darren’s nose is very unbroken, like the past week never even happened.

“Sorry, do I know you?” Darren says, and it’s not snide mockery, not this time. There’s no recognition in his eyes. 

Will looks around the street, at the town stirring to life again, waking up from a nightmare. Wiped clean of the past year it spent stuck in stasis. Alive and oblivious. “No,” Will says, and lets Darren push his way past him. 

If Darren’s here, alive and whole and unremembering, then maybe Tony is too. Maybe he and Will can start again. Maybe-

And his dad?

But Will knows in his heart that it’s not the case for his dad. He knows it, with cold, unforgiving certainty. Because Darren and the rest were absorbed, taken over, here. In the circle of the Beholder. His dad was killed in Chicago, depressingly real. Gone for real.

Some things can never be fixed.

But equally, he and his family have been given a second chance. And that counts for something. It has to count for something. 

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

Mike is holding El’s hand as the hallway melts into a shimmering haze, almost like the glare of heat on the road at the height of summer, and reality seems to thin out. He squeezes her fingers as she looks at him with wide eyes, scared eyes, and says, “We should go.”

He frowns. But she tugs him to his feet and begins to hurry back down the hallway, and he has no choice but to follow. When he looks over his shoulder, Lucas, Dustin, Steve, and Nancy are all running after them. And behind them-

The dark mass at the end of the hallway is _moving._ It trembles like liquid, hazy behind a veil of a thousand colors, and is it him or is it getting closer?

He starts to run faster. 

He’s not a good runner but his legs are long, and soon it’s him dragging El with him as fast as he can. He doesn’t want to think about it getting them. What if it gets them? What would happen then? Would they-

He can’t imagine it, so he stops trying.

And then there’s a cry from behind him and that’s Nancy’s voice, that’s _Nancy_ , and he looks back to see her on the floor, clutching at her ankle, a sharp dip in the cracked floor behind her- she must have tripped-

He doesn’t think about it. He lets go of El’s hand and rushes to his sister’s side, grabs at her shoulders, tries to help her up- but it’s too late. The rushing tide of shimmering _something_ washes over them, and the world goes still. He watches the others still running away slowly, like they’re underwater, and then looks at Nancy, who looks back at him with wide eyes. “What…” she whispers, and then he glimpses something over her head and freezes.

Himself, a kid, maybe only four, standing with his hand outstretched towards another boy sitting on the swings. Will. The image is ghostly and faint, shimmering with color. The moment they met. _It was the best thing I’ve ever done._ And then the image dissolves and it’s El, shivering in the pouring rain, blinking like a startled animal in the glare of their flashlights. And then a U-Haul, slowly crawling away down the street, leaving Mike behind. The beginning and the end - and it’s not the end really, not completely, but it’s the end of Hawkins life as it was before. El was here and then she was gone; she came back and then she left again. Nothing stays the same - he’s learnt that much.

And then far off in the haze, so flimsy he can barely see it, there’s something else. A man with dark hair, in a formal suit. And beside him a woman in a wedding dress. Mike frowns and moves closer-

And just for a moment the whole scene comes into view. The aisle, the guests, Will and Lucas and Dustin and Max all grown up, all adult and smiling, his parents (not sitting together), Nancy and Steve and Jonathan, Mrs. Byers, the Chief…

And then it flickers out of sight and he stares into the iridescent veil with wonder. But Nancy’s hand is on his arm, dragging him away, and he stumbles after her even as he wants to reach out for that honeyed taste of the future- because that was El- El and _him_ \- _marriage-_

They burst out into the freezing afternoon air and it’s like a rush of cold water. He gasps in a breath and looks at Nancy, who’s breathing hard. “You saw something, didn’t you?”

He nods. “El and I- in the future-”

She nods tightly too. “I saw Jonathan and Steve-” and then she cuts herself off, like she’s said too much. Her voice drops. “What does it mean?”

“I think-” he starts slowly, and thinks - thinks about the U-Haul, and the long line of the road out of Hawkins as its own kind of aisle, really, because sometimes paths diverge but they always come back together again eventually, _Nothing stays the same_ \- “I think it means everything’s gonna work out. In the end.”

She blinks at him, but she doesn’t get the chance to answer because then the others reach them and swallow them in hugs and El is clutching at him like he’s about to melt away into dust-

And it’s over. It’s really over. When he looks over his shoulder at the building, it’s no longer a blackened mass of ruins. It’s gray and whole, tall and imposing and empty but _whole_ , and Will did it. He did it.

But then there’s the distant sound of an engine and he stiffens. What if it isn’t over? What if Brenner survived and has come back- come to take El away again- 

But it isn’t Brenner who emerges through the trees. It’s Robin, and Murray, and Erica, and Mr. Clarke. They all head towards them - Steve reaches them first. “It’s over, the Beholder’s gone,” he says. 

Then Robin nods, and grins. “It is over, Steve.” Her eyes rest on El. “El’s safe now, safe for real. Brenner’s dead-”

Pressed against his side, he feels El suck in a breath. He himself feels a surge of vengeful joy at the thought - Brenner’s _dead_ \- but of course she’s conflicted about it. Of course she is. He grabs for her hand and squeezes it. 

“...grabbed Leroy, told him about all the evidence we have, and made it pretty clear he wouldn’t be making it out of any of this alive unless he held off on the military parade.” Robin’s voice is confident, proud. 

“There will be a debriefing, of course, we can’t expect the spooks to give up on all their shitty little customs, but-”

“It’s over,” Max finishes, wondrously. “It’s over.”

It’s over. And everything’s changed - absolutely everything - but that’s okay. Nothing stays the same.

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

** Wednesday, April 2nd, 1986 **

**Hawkins, Indiana**

     _How many nights you sit beside the phone_  
_What were the things you wanted for yourself_  
_Teenage ambitions you remember well_  
_It was the heat of the moment_  
_Telling me what your heart meant_

Lucas nods his head along to the song, drumming his fingers on his walkman. Outside the fields are a blur of green rushing past; rain is pattering against the bus window. He can’t wait to see Max again. Mike and Dustin too, though he’s half-convinced that their insistence they’d be in Hawkins for spring break was a lie, because he finds it very hard to believe that Mike would willingly spend a second longer separated from El than he absolutely had to. 

His parents were nervous about him getting the bus all the way from Fort Wayne on his own. But it’s only two hours, and the idea of a _busride_ killing him after he’s faced- well, everything he’s faced- is laughable. 

They don’t know that, though. So he simply nodded at their concerns and told them he’d be careful. He caught the Greyhound from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis - then he transferred, and now the sign for Roane County has flashed past and he’s nearly there. (It took a little while, but he’s stopped referring to it as _home_ in his head.)

When he gets off the bus in Hawkins it all looks almost exactly the same. Classic Hawkins, really. The same quiet streets, all the same faces. Including Max’s, which splits into a shit-eating grin at the sight of him. She throws her arms around his neck and he’s almost surprised at the force of it; he staggers a little and whispers, “You okay?” into her hair.

“Yeah,” she says, voice suspiciously thick, “It’s just been- it’s just been a weird couple months, y’know?”

He knows. They talk on the phone often enough - and he only moved a month ago, so it’s not like he’s missed that much. But still.

They get milkshakes at the diner that’s not a great diner, really, but nostalgia made him miss it. Then they walk the long way round to her house, and they only really get to the crux of it all when they turn onto Cherry Lane and their destination is in sight.

“She’s not home,” Max says, and he knows who she’s referring to without having to ask.

“How- how is that? By the way?” He winces at the awkwardness in his voice, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

“Shit. But, you know, it was always going to be shit. And at least he’s gone. We’re running out of money but at least the asshole’s gone.”

He nods. He remembers the night Neil left, when Max climbed the drainpipe to his room and said nothing, just curled into his side and showed him the fresh bruise on her wrist. It still fills him with fury. He looks at her now, less pale and drawn, her bright hair glowing in the drizzle. _At least he’s gone_ indeed.

Inside, they sit together on the couch and finish their milkshakes while mindlessly watching _Cheers_ reruns. When one finishes and the credits roll, he takes a deep breath and looks at her. “How is it… here?” he asks. “In- in Hawkins?”

She looks at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean- is it better? Is it worse? I remember after July fourth everything changed-”

“You don’t really wanna know, do you?” she says quietly. “Not now you got out. You’ve got your life in the big city, and Hawkins is Hawkins.”

He thinks about Chief Randall, about Pat Pulling, about Hawkins Lab and the Upside Down. The big city is better. Definitely better. But he’s asking because Hawkins is where he grew up; he’s asking because Hawkins is where most of his friends live. Where Max lives.

“My mom wants to leave,” she says suddenly, and he stares at her. Really? She catches his look and shakes her head. “What? It’s not like there’s much keeping us here. Mom doesn’t really have that many friends here, and she’s been looking for a job but there isn’t much going. And everyone here knows about Billy, and about Neil leaving, and it’s just not- it’s not great for us. So we want to leave.”

A bitter sting of hope flares up in his chest. Maybe- maybe if she’s leaving, moving away from Hawkins, maybe she’ll move somewhere closer to him. “Where are you gonna go?” he says, when he’s found his voice again.

She shrugs. “I don’t know yet.” Her eyes soften. “Maybe- I don’t know. Maybe I could talk to my mom, think about- think about moving near to Fort Wayne. I don’t know.” She looks away, quietly embarrassed, never very good at affection. 

“You’re not going back to Cali?”

She shakes her head. “Too many memories. And my dad’s a mess, a bigger mess than before, so my mom doesn’t wanna go near him.”

He touches her arm - she starts, and then melts into his hand. “That sucks,” he says. “But- I don’t know. It would be nice if you moved near me.”

Her smile is thin but there’s warmth behind it. She opens her mouth to say something - but then there’s a rapid knock on the door and she jolts with surprise. “Max, let us in, it’s raining and our shit’s getting wet!” Dustin shouts through the door, and Lucas finds himself smiling at it. He’s missed them.

“Shit, I forgot I invited Mike and Dustin,” she says, running to the door. She opens it to reveal the pair of them drenched in water, Mike hugging his backpack to his chest in a vain attempt to shelter it from the rain. They trudge inside - and immediately perk up at the sight of Lucas. Both of them tackle him in a hug at once, so tight he gasps, and when they’ve finished greeting each other they all sit down on the couch and Lucas asks, “So why aren’t you in Minnesota right now?”

Mike sighs. “No one could take me.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Not even Nancy? Surely she wants to go see Jonathan.”

“Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve are all in New York right now, looking at colleges.”

He blinks. All three of them? That’s new. “I thought Nancy wanted to go to-”

“Northwestern, yeah, but apparently not,” Mike says glumly. “But on my dad’s weekends he’s gonna teach me to drive, he says, so soon I’ll just drive up there on my own.”

 _On my dad’s weekends._ The Hargrove separation isn’t the only divorce going on in Hawkins, it seems. But Mike doesn’t seem too unhappy about it. It’s upheaval, but they’re used to upheaval. Goddamn are they used to upheaval. 

“And you’re gonna take me with you, aren’t you?” Dustin says. “You’re not leaving me behind _again_.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll bring you with me, you guys can all come if you...” and then he trails off. “If you’re around.”

“Just because we’re not gonna be living here anymore doesn’t mean we won’t be _around_ ,” Max says, not unkindly. “Will and El are living miles away but they’re still in the party, right?”

“Right,” Lucas says firmly. Things are different now, but different doesn’t mean worse. They’ve all learnt from their mistakes now. They’re not gonna let a couple hundred miles tear them apart again. 

“Speaking of the party,” Dustin says, grabbing Mike’s sodden backpack, “we brought everything we need for DnD.” 

Lucas looks at Max. This might be their last game for a while - but equally it won’t be, he knows. They’re all separating now but they’ll come back together in the future. They’ll sit around a table as adults with mortgages and cars and families and play DnD because it’s _just like old times_ \- only with a few less monsters. 

“Sure, let’s do it,” Max says.

Lucas smiles. “Sure.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

When Keith leaves the store, Robin watches his car pull out of the parking lot in the pouring rain before she grabs one of the cassettes she brought with her today and puts it on - no more DEVO, no sir - and then leans back in her chair with her feet on the desk and sighs deeply. Another day of work, another day without Steve. Seems like nothing has changed.

But things have changed, of course. Right before the three of them left, Steve was here every day, distracting her when she was stacking shelves, choosing the most inappropriate cardboard cutouts for her to put up, even manning the desk once when she had a late assignment due. And she’s flying out to meet them on Friday. She’s scrounged up all her savings; her plane ticket is permanently tucked in the pocket of her favorite corduroy jacket, right next to her heart. She’s excited. She’s excited to get out of Hawkins.

But for now, she’s here.

     _Help me make the_  
_Most of freedom and of pleasure_  
_Nothing ever lasts forever_  
_Everybody wants to rule the-_

She blinks as the bell over the door rings, jolting out of her Tears For Fears induced haze. She peers over the counter and glimpses a flash of dark hair and black leather, before whoever it is disappears behind the aisles. Somehow, although it shouldn’t, it sets her heartbeat racing. Maybe it’s-

 _But Kali’s gone,_ a voice in her head whispers. _Kali’s gone and she’s not coming back._

But they don’t _know_ that, that’s the thing. They found Will wandering aimlessly around the newly reanimated town, his eyes bright with triumph that dimmed when they mentioned Kali’s name. “Gone,” he said emptily. “She- she shut the Beholder out. I don’t know if that means…”

El let out a sob; Robin just stared into the distance. _Gone._ She’s never been very lucky - this just seemed like the next in a long string of dark days. After all, whoever made her made her a dyke, which is the unluckiest thing of all, so she was already off to a rough start.

But maybe-

The shop is silent save for the cassette. She gets to her feet - because Kali can do that, she knows, make a room seem empty when she’s still in it - and goes down the aisle. There’s no one there. Tears For Fears echoes quietly over the shelves:

     _There's a room where the light won't find you_  
_Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down_  
_When they do, I'll be right behind you_

“Hello?” she tries tentatively, her heart pounding. God, she wants it to be true. She wants it to be Kali so, so badly, so badly she can almost see her right in front of her now-

“Hi, yeah, sorry, I kind of snuck up on you.”

It’s not Kali. 

She deflates with disappointment. It’s a girl with dark hair and green eyes, dressed a little bit like Kali would, sure, but that’s where the similarities end. “I’m looking for anything with Cher in it, do you know if…”

Robin helps her find her Cher movie - _Silkwood_ , it turns out - and slumps back down in her chair, defeated. Maybe it’s time to face that Kali really is gone. 

She can’t face eating alone in the store over lunch, and there’s a break in the rain, so she grabs her sandwich (turkey leftovers from the last time her parents were home - she’s become something of a latchkey kid lately, a little like Steve) and sets off on her bike to find somewhere decent to go. 

She doesn’t get that far, however. She passes Phil Callahan, newly revived from the Beholder’s version of death, and Mrs. Wheeler, sporting a fashionable new haircut and a fresh divorce, en route; then she swerves down into the shortcut alleyway she usually takes to get away from Main Street and into the quieter areas of town, but there’s someone in her way. Someone suspiciously Carol-shaped.

She stops short and leans back on her bike, crossing her arms. Great. “What do you want, Carol?” she asks tiredly. It’s been a long day already. She really doesn’t need this.

Carol looks honestly surprised to see her, but she doesn’t move out of the way. She’s got a cigarette between her fingers and is she _crying?_ “You’re not gonna tell anyone about this,” she says, more of an order than a suggestion, but it comes out wobbly.

Robin sighs. “About what.”

Her eyes widen. “You _know_ what.”

“I found you _crying_ , Carol, it’s not a big deal, there are definitely worse things to be caught doing.” _Like staring at Lucinda Smith’s ass in the locker room in ninth grade - not even meaning to, just looking around the room, really, and then blushing disgustingly and everyone calling you a_ dyke _forever and after-_

“It will be a big deal when you know why.”

Robin waits. It kinda sounds like Carol wants to tell her why. No answer is forthcoming for a while, so she dismounts her bike and leans against the alley wall. “Don’t suppose you have a spare smoke.”

Carol blinks at her distrustfully. Then, in an action that seems to surprise both of them, she takes out her pack and passes one to Robin. Robin lights it and sighs around it. She’s not a regular smoker, but sometimes it’s nice. On shitty days like these. (Last night she dreamt about the gunshot again. About the blaze of agony in her arm, and then all the government men coming to take them away-)

“Tommy broke up with me,” Carol sniffs. 

Robin frowns. “Doesn’t that happen, like, once a week?”

That earns her a scowl. “Yes, it does, but not like _this._ This is _different._ He-” Carol swallows hard, scuffing her toe in the dirt and looking away. “He told me he’s _gay._ ”

Whispered, like it’s a dirty word, which Robin supposes it is. Huh. Who’d have thought.

Come to think of it, Steve and Tommy H-

Okay, so Tommy H definitely had a crush on Steve and maybe that changes things a little bit. But what it doesn’t change is what _assholes_ Tommy H and Carol were, and still are. It’s a little bit ironic, and Robin knows she’ll burst out laughing about this in class next week when it finally sinks in. But for now: “So he broke your heart?”

Carol’s head whips up to glare at her. “That’s not the _point._ The point is it’s gross.”

Robin’s stomach sinks. She curses herself for even stopping to talk to her about this in the first place - why does she bother? Why does she ever bother? “It’s not gross,” she argues, cringing even as she says it, because this will just make it worse.

“I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you?” Carol snaps, and she seems much more confident now she’s back to being a complete bitch. “Y’know, being a dyke and all.”

“Carol-”

“I bet you stopped here for a reason, didn’t you? You stopped here because you’re _obsessed_ with me. I bet you’re just _delighted_ Tommy’s a queer like you, it means you can swoop in and take his girlfriend for your own-”

“What the fuck, Carol? I don’t-”

“God, you’re disgusting. I can barely look at-”

“What did you say?”

Robin freezes. The voice comes from behind her, quiet yet full of force, slightly accented- and _god,_ she knows that voice. Carol shifts, jutting her chin out. “I said she’s disgusting. Because she is. Are you another dyke here to defend your _girlfriend_?”

Kali steps forward into Robin’s sightline. Robin inhales a shaky breath. She looks almost the same - thinner, maybe, a little more tired, but just as beautiful. Just as fierce. “What is it to you?”

“It’s-” and now Carol looks disconcerted, “it’s my business because she _made_ it my business, she’s stalking me-”

Kali shifts, flexing a hand, and Robin almost certainly expects some sort of trick, illusion, like before- something to scare Carol away for good- but she doesn’t expect this.

Kali shoves Carol against the wall before any of them can blink. She’s several inches shorter than Carol but she’s strong; the taller girl can’t break free. “It is _none_ of your business,” Kali hisses. “It will not ever be your business. None of our lives are your business. So you will leave Robin alone - or you’ll regret it.”

Carol’s face is as white as paper. “I- I don’t-”

“Do you understand?”

She nods painfully. And then Kali releases her, just as fast as she pinned her up, and Carol walks at an undignified hurried pace until she’s out of sight. Then Robin’s knees feel weak and she grabs the wall for support, breathing in a great lungful of hopeful air: Kali’s not gone. Kali’s here.

“Robin,” she says, and there’s almost uncertainty in it, where before there was iron strength. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about it all, about not telling you of my role in creating the Beholder, about leaving you for so long-”

Robin shakes her head. “You did what you had to. You ended it.”

“Not without cost. I lost my powers.”

She barely blinks. Does Kali think she cares about that? Really? “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “I missed you,” she tries, more tentatively.

“I missed you too. But I- I cannot stay long. My friends, they- they were arrested months ago, before I came to Hawkins for the first time. They were in part how I knew Brenner was alive. I have been trying to set them free, but it’s… hard. I can come back but I will also have to go.”

“I- okay, I don’t- save your friends. I need to finish high school anyway.” A thought suddenly strikes her. “Wait, how old are you? Have you-” _Did you even go to high school?_ The answer is probably _no_.

Kali is looking at her with vague amusement. “I’m 19, Robin. And no, I did not finish high school. But I read. I get my learning where I need it.”

She smiles a little, embarrassed. “It’s not all that relevant, not really. But still. I want to know the irrelevant stuff. I want- we can do normal things, right? While you’re not off breaking into top-secret military prisons and shit.”

“Yes. We can do normal things,” Kali says, though she doesn’t really look like she knows what normal things are. True enough: “...like what?”

“A _date._ Something that isn’t _saving the world._ Dinner, a movie, I don’t know. Something that normal people do.”

“We’re not normal, Robin.” Kali is smiling faintly. “But we can do a date.”

↥↭↭↬↹⇀⇁↿↾⇅

** Eaden, Minnesota **

Hopper begins his day as he always does: he slides out of bed, habitually checks for the knife under the mattress that he can’t sleep without ever since Russia, stands under a scalding hot shower for two minutes with the door left slightly ajar, and goes into the kitchen to make coffee for three. Then he amends it to two, because of course Jonathan’s away in New York for the week. Sometimes he brings the mugs into the bedroom; sometimes he doesn’t. Today is a day he doesn’t. Because the bed was empty and cold when he woke up. 

He takes the blanket from the back of the couch and steps outside, wincing at the rush of frigid dawn air. April, but the mornings are still cold. 

He finds her where he thought he’d find her - sitting on the edge of the porch, a cigarette between her teeth, staring out at the icy field listlessly. He drapes the blanket around her shoulders and inches himself down beside her, placing the coffees on the decking in between them. Then he huffs out a breath that mists in the air and waits for her to say something.

She finishes her cigarette, and then she speaks. “I want you to come with me to her grave today.”

“Okay,” he says easily, though he knows it won’t be easy at all. This is something she has to do: visit the grave of Crazy Aunt Darlene, who wasn’t so crazy at all, it turns out, on her birthday. And usually it would be Jonathan as Joyce’s anchor, keeping her from floating adrift, but Jonathan isn’t here and that’s a good thing for everyone, because Joyce has spent the last three months insisting it’s not his job to look after her. Which it isn’t.

So Hopper will take her, and gladly.

“I don’t- It’s not a big deal. Not really. But I’d like to do it. For her. Because none of us believed her.”

He nods again; he remembers _I need you to believe me_ all too well. Remembers that she’s probably feeling the sting of that guilt she’s far too familiar with. “What time did you want to go?”

“This morning,” she says. “Before my appointment.”

Her appointment; another thing that’s changed. They both _see people_ , now, people who claim to be able to get inside their heads. Hopper doesn’t know if it works but he figures it’s worth a shot - government’s paying, after all. Paying for people with whom they’re allowed to break the dozens of NDAs they had to sign. Not to mention the whole _legally dead_ thing.

Joyce was reluctant at first. She’d been down that road with medication, she said; it had turned out to be a trick of the Beholder. He understands the lack of trust. But when she rushed out of Lonnie’s funeral and the boys found her shaking in the parking lot with her nose bleeding so hard she felt faint- when the doctors sent her for scans and told her that anxiety was linked to probable post-traumatic stress disorder was linked to the Beholder was linked to _brain damage_ -

They all started to listen.

And they all have their issues, anyway. It’s not like Joyce is the only one.

He slides his arm around her shoulders; after a moment, she rests her head in the crook of his neck. The morning is still and silent. He likes Minnesota, he finds. It’s colder than Indiana, but prettier. And Eaden - the real Eaden, not the false image the Beholder created - is a nice town. Not nice as in picture-perfect postcard but nice as in ordinary, and that’s all they really need.

He looks over as there’s movement at the edge of the field. Sure enough he spots someone biking out of the woods down the track, a dark shape against the sparkling frost. For a moment he frowns, before there are sounds behind him and Will comes rushing out, tucking his scarf into his coat and smiling into the morning.

“Tony!” he calls across the frost. The cycling figure slows and waves. Will leans down to kiss Joyce on the cheek, and he waves Hopper goodbye.

“Have a good time and be careful on your bike in the ice,” Joyce says, though her tone is lighter than it might have been two years ago. Will nods and disappears, and a moment later the two boys cycle off together. Getting breakfast, apparently. Hopper’s amazed to see the kid up this early. As a teenager he himself rarely arose before ten.

Will is happy here. And that’s the most important thing for Joyce’s happiness, and Joyce’s happiness makes El happier, and all three of these things make Hopper glad. It really is the clean slate they all wanted - the clean slate Hopper had no choice but to take, since he’s legally dead and in towns like Hawkins _people talk._

Joyce shifts her head on his shoulder, lets out a sigh. “I didn’t think I could still feel-” She swallows her words but he doesn’t want her to; he wants her to talk to him. He remains silent and eventually she continues. “After everything, after- after my mom, and my brother, and my dad, and Lonnie and Will and Bob I- I think I forgot what it was like not to settle. And sure things aren’t perfect but they’re never going to be perfect and when I think about it-” She breathes out. “This is the closest it’s ever been.”

He presses a kiss to the top of her head, where that permanent streak of gray begins, and lets her words sit in comfortable silence. He finds he agrees with her. Because things aren’t perfect, not at all. But they’re all going forward, not back. They can’t ever go back. And of all the futures he’s ever been offered, he’s glad he chose this one.

“Hey, let’s go inside. I’ll make breakfast.”

She agrees with a slight nod of her head, and lets him lead her inside. He’ll fry up bacon and eggs in a pan and she’ll eat it between two slices of bread; El will wander in, sleepy after staying over with a friend in town, and he’ll ruffle her hair and make a plate for her too; later he’ll drive Joyce to Darlene’s grave, not far from here, and she’ll let go of the last of the ghosts watching over her shoulder. Then she’ll go to her appointment, and he to his; Joyce will call Jonathan in New York and he’ll tell her all about his great plans with Nancy and Steve, and even Robin too. 

And in the evening, the four of them will watch bad horror movies, because the imitation is comforting when you’ve seen the real thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits: [heroes](https://open.spotify.com/track/7Jh1bpe76CNTCgdgAdBw4Z?si=Uf5xkxz0Q-2a844S8O03LQ) by david bowie
> 
> well. what a wild ride. it's two weeks late but we're finally at the end. i hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it. as always, thank you to mya for being such a light, and to liz for always encouraging and engaging me. 
> 
> the title of this fic is from kim wilde's [song of the same name](https://open.spotify.com/track/2rZOPy16sdEQyOKmKmiULt?si=9vavMoLzR5iER5nlAbh8qA), which is all about dreaming and choices and fantasies and the idea of a 'bridge' is one that really resonated with the concept of the beholder, so here we are.
> 
> eaden, the name of the town, is an old english word meaning 'given' or 'granted'. i thought it thematically appropriate.
> 
> let me know your thoughts below and talk to me on [tumblr](https://palmviolet.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/joycefinkels). if you have any questions about details i put in this fic, my process etc etc, please ask me i would love to talk about it <3


End file.
